Opportunities, Challenges and Practices of Sustainable Investment and Stewardship
a practical course
This course aims to enable its participants to understand and contribute to sustainable investment and stewardship.
The participants will learn to recognise their own opportunities and challenges in investment and how these relate to those of the broader economy, society and environment.
Learning objectives
Purpose, culture, and authenticity
- Evaluate the purpose of asset management and critically assess the purposes of asset managers
- Examine the concepts of professionalism and authenticity in investment
- Identify organisational and cultural enablers for purpose, stewardship, and sustainable investment
Stewardship
- Demonstrate how to achieve effective stewardship of capital across asset classes, including positive engagement and voting outcomes
- Examine the ways that asset managers can improve their stewardship capabilities and approach
- Define the techniques for successful engagement in different markets
- Describe a typical process for selecting, managing and implementing engagements
- Describe common sustainability issues and explain how they can be approached through engagement
- Identify the benefits and common concerns related to collaborative engagements
- Consider the elements of good corporate governance across key markets, recognising the investor’s role in promoting best practice
Sustainable investment
- Show how to integrate sustainability and ESG factors into investment models holistically and how this varies by investment style and asset class
- Appraise approaches to exclusions in asset management
- Apply stewardship and sustainable investment in the context of product development
- Respond to industry trends in manager selection from an asset owner perspective
- Address investor scepticism towards sustainability and common counterarguments to a responsible approach to investing
- Identify and respond to common pitfalls and errors in developing an approach to ESG integration
Impacts of investment
- Distinguish between the negative and positive impacts of investment and stewardship in primary and secondary markets
- Contrast the negative and positive externalities of business and investment and explain common challenges in addressing them
- Explain the imperative and challenges for positive systemic stewardship
Reporting, data, and the regulatory context
- Address key considerations for deciding whether to support industry initiatives, investor coalitions and normative standards
- Discuss regulations on corporate sustainability, stewardship and sustainable investment in key markets and understand their implications
- Compare key terms relating to sustainable investment and stewardship and explain the different ways in which such terms are understood and used by investor
- Outline the benefits and challenges of third-party ESG data and ratings