I honestly recommend the APG Responsible Investing Podcast produced by APG Asset Management to those who are interested in #SustainableFinance and #AssetManagement and in the future of our planet.
My favourite is Episode 2 that went live in March 2024: The different roles of asset managers and pension funds featuring Matilde Segarra and Willem Schramade, hosted by Shahzad Memon.
Key takeaways:
– Pension funds have expressed a strong interest to #invest #sustainably, they are looking for asset managers that could implement their requirements.
– A company is ideally being managed to be healthy in all aspects:
= It needs to make #money. It’s just like breathing – it is not the goal of our life but it’s a very important condition.
= #Socially, it needs to be in #order. It has to be above all the minimum standards.
= And #environmentally it has to #avoid #damage.
And the role of the financial sector, asset managers is to play a role in putting pressure on the companies to do that.
– Now it is not just about the financial value maximizing shareholder value (in practice maximizing EPS in a short run). Now it is about the #long #term #financial value, long term #social value, long term #environmental value and how these three #interact.
– #Improvement is essential. Asset owners and asset managers are not just rewarded for investing in stuff that’s already green. Now we need to be rewarded for #making the #brown #stuff #green, because that’s much harder #challenge. [It helped me to understand why the shareholders and the banks financing Światłowód Inwestycje expect us not only to keep a high level of our ESG scoring, e.g. GRESB, but they also expect us, or even “force” us, to keep improving the scoring each year for a reward being lower financing costs].
– There should be a #dark #green part in the asset managers’ portfolio, but then there should be a brown to green transition story as well.
– When you build a solar plant you do also need to think about the land that you are building on. Can you potentially maybe have negative impact on the biodiversity? In the end if you make hastag#progress on just #one #piece of the puzzle but you have #negative impact #somewhere #else, essentially you are #fooling yourself. [This helped me to understand the significance of our suppliers assessment].
– Currently we have a system which is too short-term focused and we are basically destroying the #future of #next #generations.
APG Asset Management is one of the world’s largest pension investors. Its ambition is to achieve attractive investment returns for its clients in a responsible way.
APG Responsible Investing Podcast – Listen on:
🎧 Spotify
#podcast #ResponsibleInvesting
