Our mission is to channel capital and resources towards refugees
RII is an independent data provider that seeks to bring transparency to company refugee action and close the refugee data and investment gap.
Innovative Origins
RII was founded in Fall, 2020 by Ignacio and Sindhu, two sustainable finance and advisory professionals who met studying social impact investment at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service.
In Spring, 2020 we won the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge, an international graduate school pitch competition, with their product Refugee ETF, the first public markets investment product focused on refugees. Refugee ETF is the first and only refugee-themed idea to win the Sustainable Investing Challenge.
Developing Unique Insights
In late 2020 we got to work, hiring data scientists to build the Refugee Corporate Action (RCA) Dataset, and data analysts to track and score our initial set of companies.
We expanded our dataset in 2022 to cover benchmark indices such as the S&P 500 and Stoxx 600 – and captured the flurry of corporate action on behalf of Ukrainian refugees. We have now researched and analyzed over 1,800 global companies.
We solidified the Refugee Lens Scorecard, our proprietary methodology for assessing corporate refugee action. We did so with the advice and feedback of our RII Advisory Board, including leaders of refugee nonprofits, senior ESG data leaders, and index specialists.
We partnered with Solactive, a German indexing firm, to build the prototype Refugee Leaders Index, the first index of its type listing the top-rated global companies on refugee action.
We published field-building research, partnering with ISS ESG on our World Refugee Day report ‘A Sustainable Private Sector Solution to the Refugee Crisis’. And in early 2023, RII published its global report ‘Corporate Leaders in Refugee Economic Integration’ featuring the top 50 companies from the RCA Dataset, details on our methodology, and stakeholder interviews with Unilever and Generali.
Influencing Change
As an innovative social enterprise at the nexus of ESG data and investment and sustainable refugee solutions, RII has a unique story to tell.
We continue to build traction for scaling private sector solutions to the growing refugee crisis. Our co-founders have been featured on panels spanning the innovative finance, ESG data, and refugee solutions spaces.
We are regularly featured as sources by reporters from outlets such as the Financial Times, Impact Alpha, and ESG Investor.
