The UK’s largest investors put environmental concerns and corporate governance issues as top of their lists when considering companies in which to invest, according to research by EY.
However, the respondents awarded a “could do better” to such areas as audit, corporate reporting, trust, and reputation, according to a report on the research published by CityAM.
Clearly the activities of campaigners like Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion have significantly raised awareness on environmental issues.
But the profile of environmental concerns is also being raised by the annual world summits on ethical finance, the most recent of which was held in Edinburgh in early September and was attended by senior representatives from more than 200 companies and organisations.
The summit is organised by the Global Ethical Finance Initiative, which oversees, organises and coordinates a series of programmes to promote finance for positive change.
In early October, Mark Carney, Governor of the BoE (Bank of England) warned that companies and industries that are not moving towards zero-carbon emissions will be punished by investors and go bankrupt.
But he also pointed out that “great fortunes could be made by those working to end greenhouse gas emissions with a big potential upside for the UK economy in particular”.
The Peer to Peer lending platform Lending Works says that Socially Responsible Lending (SRI) has risen up the investors’ agenda in the last five years and estimates that 79% of Generation Xers and 67% of Baby Boomers identify it as an issue of concern.
Identifying ethical investments depends on positive and negative screening by investment funds. Negative screening by fund managers excludes certain activities, such as fossil fuels, alcohol, intensive farming etc from investment, while in positive screening fund managers actively seek out opportunities that contribute positively to environmental concerns such as organic farming, green energy, and public housing.
This research can be tricky for investors to access independently and the advice is to use a financial adviser well versed in ethical funding, and also as ever, to remember that the value of shares and investments can go down as well as up.
But it is encouraging that environmental concerns have risen to the top of the investor agenda.
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