A View From: Reporting and Data to Build an ESG Portfolio

A View From: Reporting and Data to Build an ESG Portfolio

Jess Panni, Principal, Endjin, speaks off the back of SustainableFinance.Live's session on Reporting and Data to Build an ESG Portfolio where expert attendees spoke about Data Management and discussed the challenges of building a Passive investing Index drive portfolio for Institutional Investors using ESG and other data. He talks about overcoming these challenges and identifying opportunities to…

Elevate Your Practice: Customized ESG Portfolios and Impact Reporting


First Affirmative Financial Network has partnered with YourStake.org to create a strong force in the ESG/SRI arena with portfolio construction and reporting platforms that can elevate the conversation and assist in creating investments for a better future. Advisors have a wealth of information at their fingertips through these comprehensive tools. Both First Affirmative and YourStake.org are working to improve the understanding of investment performance, reduce risk and have a positive impact on the world through SRI investing and ESG principles. AffirmativESG and YourStake – can help advisors align their clients’ investments with their values by providing customized investment portfolios and tangible metrics on issues from animal to human rights and climate change to corporate responsibility.

See how you can deliver financial and impact returns.
Align your clients’ investments with their values by providing customized investment portfolios and tangible metrics on issues that matter.
What do your clients care about? Climate Change? Diversity? Racial Equity? LGBTQ+ Rights? Corporate Responsibility?
Elevate the conversation and deliver investments for a better future.

Theresa Gusman, Chief Investment Officer
First Affirmative Financial Network

First Affirmative’s Chief Investment Officer, Theresa Gusman, is on a mission to change the way companies, advisors, and individuals see their investments. Gusman’s commitment to incorporating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues into investment decisions began early in her 30-plus year investment career. She understands the full investment process, from research and portfolio management to asset and wealth management leadership roles, including Senior Portfolio Manager, Global Head of Equities, and Global Executive Committee Member at Deutsche Bank.

Theresa’s commitment to sustainable, responsible, and impact (SRI) investing is driven by her fiduciary responsibility to clients and strong belief that ESG issues are financial issues that can affect performance and risk — in addition to being the right thing to do. She is convinced that clients’ financial and impact objectives are attainable simultaneously.

First Affirmative’s unique AffirmativESG platform provides a unique, proprietary foundation for analysis, assessment and measurement. All of these factors combine to help Gusman in her work toward making sustainable, responsible, and impact investing accessible to all.

Gabe Rissman
President
YourStake.org

Gabe is the Co-Founder and President of YourStake.org, an ESG data and impact reporting company. Gabe was previously a climate activist and data scientist at Yale, where he wrote studied computational astrophysics while running two climate advocacy organizations. He has experience on the ESG Desk of Rockefeller Capital Management, as well as at the Connecticut Green Bank. Gabe currently sits on the board of the Intentional Endowments Network.

Patrick Reed
CEO
YourStake.org

Patrick’s is the Co-Founder and CEO of YourStake.org. He studied econometrics at Yale, where he focused his thesis work on climate-economic modeling, under Nobel-prize winning Nordhaus. He has published academically in sustainable finance, and has experience within renewable energy finance and community organizing.

First Affirmative is an independent, employee-owned investment advisor registered (RIA). First Affirmative provides investment advice consistent with the philosophies of sustainable, responsible, impact (SRI) investing. First Affirmative began conducting business in 1999 and believes (as it has from the beginning) that the ways in which people save, spend and invest can dramatically influence both the fabric and consciousness of society. Investors can make a meaningful difference by consciously directing investment capital toward enterprises that contribute to a clean, healthy environment, that treat people fairly and embrace equal opportunity, that produce safe and useful products, and support efforts to promote world peace. Clients who choose to invest with First Affirmative make a conscious choice to put their money to work for a dual purpose—to provide for a secure retirement, for example, while working for a better, more socially just and environmentally sustainable future for all.

YourStake provides personalized, transparent, and explainable ESG data and impact reporting for wealth managers and asset managers. We help investment professionals find ESG investments that match their clients’ values, and tell stories around the impact their portfolios create (e.g. your portfolio is responsible for 100,000 fewer pieces of plastic in the ocean).

How ESG Reporting is Becoming a Top Priority?


As ESG Reporting is becoming top priority for companies to disclose, the goal behind it is much larger and pressing for our long term sustainability!
Comment and tell us how you are tracking ESG data today and subscribe for more videos on industry topics.

Understanding ESG Reporting


ESG/Sustainability is on the minds of individuals, policymakers and investors the world over. And high-quality information from companies is central to the discussion. This event aims to equip individual investors with a better understanding of what ESG reporting is, how to integrate it into their investing decisions, and current developments in the ESG reporting space.

Learn more: https://www.ifac.org/knowledge-gateway/contributing-global-economy/discussion/sustainability-standards

What is ESG Data and how to use it?


0:00:30 – What is ESG Data?
0:01:16 – Data Sources & Collection
0:01:54 – ESG Data Use Cases
0:02:16 – ESG Data Quality

Read the whole data guide here:
https://datarade.ai/data-categories/esg-data/guide

Our topic today is ESG Data. With sustainability becoming increasingly important in business, environmental aspects of a business may have a huge impact in a company’s future.

(ESG )Environmental, social and governance topics represent the three main factors which measure the sustainability and ethical impact of an investment in a company or business.

In this video will learn what ESG data is, how it is collected from different sources, and how it is been used in business.

What is ESG data?
ESG data is knowledge on how good a company is at managing and disclosing non-financial factors that are relevant to the long-term health of its business and its license to operate.

Environmental
how corporations respond to climate change, how good they are with water management

Social
how effective their health and safety policies are in the protection against accidents, how they manage their supply chains, how they treat their workers

Governmental
whether they have a corporate culture that builds trust and fosters innovation.

Data Sources
ESG, annual and proxy reports
– statistics on companies ESG performance can be directly aggregated from the company’s external reporting via scraping and NLP

Government & NGO websites
– Similarly, on a national level, the data can be collected from government and NGO reports

Other and alternative sources ( 3rd party)
– financial news and reports, company reviews and social media.

How to use ESG data?
In essence ESG Data can be used like any alternative data for financial analysis purposes. This is why investors and hedge funds, willing to make better investment decisions, use ESG Data to identify companies with lower financial risks due to their promising environmental or other practises.

ESG Data quality
Data sources are non standardized and provided by companies themselves. This can lead to occasional bias

Use of alternative data sources like company reviews and social media can help to balance the bias that is at times associated with company provided information.

While company reports are not updated that often, some alternative ESG Data sources like social media and company reviews can give you timely insights that make you smarter than your competitors.

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