Last week’s SRI Services online conference, held during ‘Good Money Week 2020’ put a spotlight on why advisers must engage with ESG sooner rather than later. SRI’s founder, Julia Dreblow, has been talking about the importance of ESG for over 20 years. SRI helps financial advisers and other intermediaries to understand and compare sustainable, responsible and ethical investment fund options.
Among the excellent speakers at the event was Richard Monks, the FCA’s director of strategy. He was clear that sustainable finance is a key focus for the FCA and advisers must engage with ESG investing to ensure their clients can access investments that align to their ethics.
Four key points from his presentation that resonated with me include:
He outlined the FCA proposals for guiding principles for asset managers. These include:
Purpose
It’s clear the FCA will find ‘box ticking’ unacceptable in the ESG space. Four key take-outs from the presentation include:
The PMX view
Because performance within the ESG area has been good, many discretionary managers are now entering the arena. Unlike these newcomers, PortfolioMetrix has been running ESG-focused portfolios for nearly four years, as well as incorporating ESG considerations into our core offering. Our track record means we have robust stats to support our performance claims.
We also recently published a white paper that has received praise from some influential independent experts in the sustainable economics field. It’s free to download and provides a balanced overview of all aspects of ESG investing, with the aim of providing everything you need to know on ESG in one document to help advisers engage with the subject.