Managing business integrity risk throughout the lifecycle of an investment is essential to building strong, resilient businesses. It also helps ensure investments deliver the intended development impact and outcomes. Done well, it reduces the risk of inadvertently contributing to systemic corruption and unethical business practices that can undermine the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
To help address this, we partnered with Transparency International UK (TI-UK), a leading independent anti-corruption organisation, to create practical guidance for impact investors. It aims to help investors identify and manage business integrity risk in their portfolios post-investment and through exit. The guide emphasises that business integrity is not just a compliance issue but a core part of creating the foundations for growth that supports development impact and financial performance.
This work builds on our collaboration with TI-UK through the Investing with Integrity series, which began in 2022. Together, we have developed tools to address business integrity considerations in impact investing.
Investing with Integrity III: Addressing the Portfolio Monitoring Challenge is the third and final report in the series, published in October 2025. It focuses on the monitoring phase of investment and builds on earlier work to offer recommendations for impact investors to protect development impact outcomes and facilitate good business practices.
The guide includes a monitoring framework made up of 28 priority indicators of risk and risk mitigation controls across 10 components of a business integrity risk management system. It is available to download as an Excel sheet from Transparency International’s website. It promotes the collection of informative data to monitor effective risk management and is adaptable, allowing investors to streamline data requests and tailor them to the relevant risk factors for their investees.
The guide has five key recommendations:
- Embed business integrity into post-investment monitoring
- Foster a collaborative relationship with investees
- Use a mix of quantitative and qualitative indicators
- Tailor monitoring to risk and context
- Link integrity monitoring to financial and impact outcomes
For more from the Investing with Integrity series, see Investing with Integrity (2022) and Investing with Integrity II (2024).
