Alterfin: Thirty Years of Human Yield

Author: Caterina Giordano, Alterfin.

In the last of our blog series to celebrate the International Year of Cooperatives taking place in 2025, Caterina Giordano of Alterfin reflects on three decades of cooperative finance rooted in people rather than profit. Drawing on its experience as a Belgian cooperative investor in sustainable family farming and microfinance, the post introduces the concept of “human yield” — a cooperative-driven approach to measuring impact that places dignity, resilience and lived outcomes at the heart of investment decisions.

For over thirty years, Alterfin has demonstrated that finance can generate value beyond financial returns. Founded in Belgium in 1994, the cooperative invests in sustainable family farming and microfinance across Latin America, Africa and Asia, guided by a simple conviction: capital should serve people.

Alterfin was created by Belgian NGOs and ethical banks who believed that finance could strengthen dignity, resilience and opportunity for those excluded from formal financial systems. Choosing the cooperative model was a deliberate act. Ownership, governance and purpose are aligned with long-term value creation rather than short-term profit maximisation.

Today, nearly 6,000 cooperative members — citizens and institutions — invest not as donors, but as co-owners. Their capital supports organisations working with smallholder farmers and micro-entrepreneurs, reinforcing food security, local economies and long-term resilience where access to finance remains limited.

Smallholder coffee producer, member of Casil cooperative in Peru - Alterfin's partner since 2006.

Human yield: impact rooted in cooperative logic

In 2025, the International Year of Cooperatives, Alterfin gives clearer expression to what has guided its work from the beginning: human yield.

Human yield complements financial performance by focusing on what investment enables in people’s lives — income stability, resilience to shocks, empowerment and dignity.

In a world where investment performance is often reduced to numbers, human yield invites a different question: what is the human return on my investment? Who benefits, and how? At Alterfin, this question guides us to reinterpret return itself as human yield because we want to understand and quantify our social impact.

At the same time, as impact finance risks becoming increasingly standardised and metric-driven, human yield offers a way to reconnect investment decisions with lived realities – without sacrificing financial discipline. It goes beyond standard ESG metrics or portfolio-level impact indicators by grounding assessment in lived outcomes and the perspectives of farmers and entrepreneurs reached through Alterfin’s partners. This ensures that impact remains human, contextual and meaningful.

This approach is inseparable from Alterfin’s cooperative structure. As a cooperative, Alterfin is guided by its members — not by external shareholders seeking short-term returns. Shared ownership also means shared responsibility: members help guide the cooperative’s direction through democratic governance, accept informed risk where impact is highest, and support patient, long-term investment.

This alignment allows Alterfin to reinvest value into impact rather than extraction, maintain commitments through crises, and support organisations that may be smaller, earlier-stage or operating in fragile contexts — precisely where human outcomes matter most.

Microentrepreneurs, clients of Chamroeun a microfinance institution in Cambodia - Alterfin's partner since 2014.

Impact as a driver of better investment decisions

Human yield is not a communication concept; it is a management tool.

Alterfin has embedded impact studies into its investment cycle to test impact likelihood assumptions, understand how change occurs, and assess whether capital is being allocated where it can generate the greatest social value. We don’t ask superficial questions. We meet people in the field. We listen. We try to understand what has changed in their lives, and why. Nearly 1,000 farmers and entrepreneurs have been interviewed through these studies, providing insights that link household‑level outcomes with institutional and financial performance.

These insights directly inform investment decisions, partner support and risk assessment. By linking qualitative outcomes at household level with institutional and financial performance, Alterfin strengthens its ability to invest responsibly over the long term — particularly in contexts exposed to economic, social and climate-related shocks.

For cooperative members, this translates into greater transparency and accountability. Alongside financial results, members receive a Human Yield Statement that connects their investment to concrete human outcomes. This allows members to see, in a personalized way, how their investment impacts human lives.

Finance rooted in people

After three decades, Alterfin’s founding intuition remains unchanged: sustainable finance must remain rooted in people’s realities. Human yield captures this commitment by affirming that solidarity through cooperative investment is not charity, but a driver of shared and durable progress. We can summarise this philosophy simply: finance is, above all, about investing in human beings — helping them move forward, seize opportunities, protect their families and build long‑term resilience.

As Alterfin enters its fourth decade, human yield serves as both a measure and a compass — guiding capital toward organisations and communities that transform opportunity into resilience, dignity and long-term development.

About the Author:

Caterina Giordano is Chief Impact officer at Alterfin and has 20 years of experience in sustainable development and impact investing. She manages the impact department including steering of the global microfinance and sustainable agriculture portfolio at Alterfin; supervision of the Investment unit; management of the TA unit; management of the Environmental and Social Impact Unit; management of the portfolio analytics Unit and Marketing & Communication one.

Caterina joined Alterfin in 2013 at first as Africa and then Asia Regional Manager, to become, in 2017, Head of Investments and in 2022 CIO. She started her career in microfinance with K-Rep Bank (Kenya) conducting an extensive survey to understand the Bank’s outreach and assess its mission drift risk. She spent 6 years in Kenya first managing an agri-financing project under an Italian NGO and then as Africa Regional Manager for Microfinanza Rating. In 2010, she finally joined the social investment sector. Prior to Alterfin, she worked for an Equity Investor and participated to the set-up of a microfinance institution in Zambia. She holds a master’s degree in economics of public Administration and International Administration at Bocconi University.