ESG

Responsible Investment Association Australasia was pleased to host our annual ESG Trends to Watch webinar.

Momentum around responsible investment and sustainable finance hit new highs in 2022, and all indicators suggest that for our own markets of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, this focus on embedding sustainability into finance won’t slow in 2023. 2023 is shaping up to keep us all busy, as our sector firms up its position within the core financial market settings across the globe. Currently being hardwired into the sector are codes of practice, mandatory disclosure requirements, formal labelling standards, additional scrutiny by regulators, convergence on standard definitions and elevated expectations of investment managers, asset owners and financial advisers.

Business of the meeting: To accept the minutes of the 2021 AGM; To receive, consider and adopt the financial report of the Association to the year end 30 June 2022.

The UN Principles for Responsible Investment, the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance and the CFA Institute have been working together over many years on joint programmes relating to ESG disclosure standards, definitions and understanding practices. They are acutely aware of the increasing pressure on their members and signatories to clearly present approaches to ESG investment so that beneficiaries, regulators and other stakeholders are able to understand ESG approaches taken in investment products and strategies. This public resource is intended to be used by the investment industry, regulators and policy makers with the objective of providing greater clarity and alignment in their usage in literature and across the industry.

The Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA) is pleased to the launch of the first comprehensive study on investor stewardship practices in Australia and New Zealand conducted with research partner KPMG.

ASB is one of the largest fund managers in New Zealand with over $20 billion in assets under management for around 500,000 investors. ASB Group Investments is owned by ASB Bank Limited, which was the first savings bank in New Zealand, established in 1847. RIAA spoke with Emma Lavelua, Product Manager Wealth, Managed Funds and Merrin Laurenson, Senior Product Manager at ASB about their approach to stewardship and responsible investment journey.

Through volatile markets and increased public scrutiny, the responsible investment industry is maturing – setting in place stronger standards, better frameworks for increased transparency, and ensuring these are consistent and comparable across regions. So what practices are responsible investment managers improving on, and how did the sector grow in 2021?

The portion of New Zealand assets managed using a rigorous, leading approach to responsible investment reached 49% totalling $179 billion in 2021, up from 43% in 2020, a new study by the Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA) found. The Responsible Investment Benchmark Report Aotearoa New Zealand 2022, researched in collaboration with EY, shows a step up in responsible investment activity. Investment managers are expanding their responsible investment offerings to investors across their portfolios, improving transparency and disclosures, ramping up their engagement with companies on sustainability issues, and increasingly excluding sectors deemed unethical. The study also shows excellence in responsible investment typically materialises into superior financial returns. In 2021, products certified by RIAA as quality, true-to-label responsible investments on average outperformed benchmarks across all categories and almost all timeframes, while non-certified products labelled responsible investments stayed on par with benchmarks.

Through volatile markets and increased public scrutiny, the responsible investment industry is maturing – setting in place stronger standards, better frameworks for increased transparency, and ensuring these are consistent and comparable across regions. So what practices are responsible investment managers improving on, and how did the sector grow in 2021?