Tom Ellis, Editor, Professional Adviser

NextWealth MD, Heather Hopkins, shares fresh research from the ways that financial advisers are integrating ESG into client conversations and their businesses.

Should fund managers seek to actively engage with companies to change behaviour or simply exclude “sin” stocks.

As momentum builds to tackle climate change, governments worldwide, including the US, UK, EU, China and Japan, are planning huge programmes to tackle both the climate emergency and air pollution, through the transition from fossil fuels to zero-carbon alternatives. This will spur investments into the clean energy industry.

In this session Aberdeen Standard Capital will talk through the drivers behind the momentum the world is seeing in the adoption of responsible and sustainable habits in everyday life. Every country, sector and industry will have regulation and consumer demand forcing change, by proxy this will impact the companies people invest in either directly or through funds. There are practical steps financial planners can take to build their responsible investing proposition and integrate it into their client service proposition. By the end of the session you will be able to explain the momentum drivers to clients, have a few simple, practical ideas that may fit with your values and your financial planning process.

Meet Rosie Rankin, a director at Baillie Gifford who has worked since its inception on Positive Change: a global equity strategy which aims to deliver attractive investment returns and contribute towards a more sustainable and inclusive world.

Rosie will share what Positive Change means and how she thinks about it in a portfolio context. She’ll discuss the importance of the measurement and reporting of non-financial metrics and share her enthusiasm on the areas which the team are currently exploring in their search for companies where profit complements purpose.

Objectives:

- What does Positive Change mean in the context of a listed equity portfolio?

- How to think about a portfolio with dual objectives?

- How to approach reporting of non-financial metrics and impact reporting?

Tom Ellis, Editor, Professional Adviser

ESG disclosure is here to stay and set to have a huge impact, not just on financial services but on all companies. But what exactly does it involve, what needs to be disclosed in the UK and elsewhere and how do you achieve compliance? FE Fundinfo’s Mikkel Bates and Stephen Mitchell will answer this is their ESG Masterclass.

Governments, corporates and consumers are driving a global sustainability revolution which will profoundly change how we live, work and consume. As the world transitions to a more inclusive growth model, we believe companies that provide innovative solutions to build a low carbon economy will benefit from secular demand tailwinds over the next decades. By holistically targeting the opportunity set, including areas such as clean energy, sustainable food, agriculture and the circular economy, we seek to position client portfolios on the right side of disruption, capturing not only attractive financial but also impact returns.

The learning objectives of this presentation are to:

• Understand the fundamentals of ESG and how ESG investing works in the Business Cycle

• Appreciate the 5 ways that ESG creates value, regardless of the economic outlook

• Understand how high scoring ESG stocks performed vs the Oil Majors

Global sustainable equity investing presents investors with a wide choice of investment opportunities. George Crowdy, co-manager of the RL Global Sustainable Equity Fund, will explain how the fund is much more than just an ‘environmental’ proposition, investing in innovative companies with strong growth potential that provide a wider benefit both through their products and their operations. George will highlight that the RLAM sustainable team’s investment approach doesn’t differentiate between stocks from developed or emerging markets but looks to invest in established global companies, referencing topical and long-term exciting themes within the current environment.