A Deep Dive into Sustainable Investment – How can I make a positive difference with my money?

By Charlotte Taylor-St Ruth – Head of Client Care

In reaction to the obvious impact of climate change around us, people understandably want to know if they can make a difference and where they can start. In the area in which I work, Financial Planning, we are finding this increasingly manifests itself into a question from clients – “How can I make a positive difference with my investments?”.

The subject and coverage of sustainable investing is vast. Whilst climate change is an obvious area, it also looks at other global concerns like inequality of access to healthcare or education and resource depletion. We have all read about the national/international news events with people being increasingly aware and concerned about where pension and investment funds are investing their money and demanding divestment from some sectors/companies.

Last week we followed up on our blog of March 2021 with a webinar that was well attended and very well received.

The webinar

Sustainable investing has developed substantially in the past decade, moving on from solely excluding companies that are not considered ethical.

I had a great chat with Phoebe Stone – Head of Sustainable Investing at LGT Vestra, Lindsay Smart – Head of Sustainability at Triple Point and Mike Appleby – Investment Manager of the Sustainable Future funds at Liontrust Asset Management for the latest in our Deep Dive series, this one focussing on sustainable investing.

Our group of experts discussed a number of areas including:

• The different approaches to sustainable investing and what they consider when investing for their clients in relation to ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance), looking at the operation of the business and impact investing, looking at the goods and services the companies provide and the positive impact they are having
• What positives came out of the recent COP26 and where our experts felt it may have fallen short
• What is greenwashing and how can investors be sure that their investments are having the positive impact that they suggest?
• Phoebe and Lindsay discussed the changes they have led in their own firms when it comes to sustainability
• Mike shared with us the ‘1.5 degree challenge’ Liontrust has set the companies it invests in

Webinar recording

You can catch up on our webinar below. You can also find out more about our views on sustainable investing in this blog.

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