The informal economy accounts for half of the economic activity in Colombia. Street vending is a major part of the informal sector. In the context of a rapid urbanization due to internal conflicts, low skilled workers find a last resort for income generation as street vendors. Even though studies have revealed that street vendors can have high profits, they usually remain poor. A primary reason is their continuous indebtedness outside the regulated financial market. This paper proposes a comprehensive questionnaire survey on the socioeconomic profile of street vendors. This tool can be used to assess the individual credit risk and incentivize the financial inclusion of the poor. It can also be used for evaluation processes by the government or impact investors.

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This study developed an impact investing ecosystem framework to present a comprehensive overview of the impact investing sector, identifying key challenges and possibilities. Two Asian countries, Japan and Singapore, were used as case studies. The proposed framework revealed that the market scales in Japan and Singapore were small and each country faces unique challenges for developing impact investing. For Japan, the low level of philanthropic activities and the small social sector were the key challenges to overcome for impact investing growth. For Singapore, the government’s low social expending strategy may limit the development. However, both countries have supportive environments for impact investing due to high-quality human resources, well-developed financial markets and political interest. In particular, the high total wealth of high network individuals (HNWI) in Japan and large donations to charities in Singapore (% GDP) offer rich potential.