ESG
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ESG & Responsible Investment
The ESG & Responsible Investment landscape is evolving rapidly. Investment organisations need to be able to adapt and respond quickly to keep up with ever-growing client demand, evolving regulation and make the transition to the new landscape to seize the unique opportunities available.
How we work with clients
We have unrivalled experience and market insight to help our clients define and deliver their ESG & Responsible Investment strategy and operating model. We work across the value chain to support organisations to define and embed their chosen approach to ESG & Responsible Investment.
Our support includes:
ESG Vision, Strategy & Planning:
- Understand how you compare to your peers with our ESG Healthcheck
- Develop a clear and coherent vision, strategy & roadmap across your organisation
- Understand where you want to lead, and where the tactical and strategic wins are
- Case Study: Conducting an ESG Healthcheck
Clients and Client Reporting:
- Define your market positioning and ESG proposition approach
- Define what a best-in-class client servicing should look like to optimise client experience
- Define and implement reporting templates to clearly articulate impact and outcomes achieved
- Case Study: ESG Client Reporting Capability
Embedding ESG in the Investment Process:
- Assess existing and desirable levels of integration for each desk
- Develop a robust investment approach, tailored to each desk
- Define a roadmap across research, proprietary scoring, engagement, and voting
- Case Study: ESG Investment Process Integration
Regulatory Readiness:
- Horizon scan for the regulatory requirements and voluntary code standards across jurisdictions
- Understand what regulations and standards are impacting your clients, who rely on your data
- Define detailed impact assessments and deliver change across your operating model
- Case Study: Understanding the ESG Regulatory Landscape
Data & Technology:
- Define and deliver an integrated, end-to-end data model and technology architecture
- Automate and standardise tools and processes supporting investment decision making
- Deploy reporting & analytics capability to enable real-time decision making & servicing
- Case Study: Evolving ESG Data and Technology
Why Alpha?
Our deep industry and implementation experience mean we are uniquely placed to help our clients navigate their ESG journey.
We specialise in investment management. Our focus on the industry means we have deep specialism in all the areas that support the design and delivery of ESG & Responsible Investment strategies.
We bring a practical mindset and collaborative approach based on our wide-ranging experience instilling change across the end-to-end operating model for investment managers, helping realise their ESG ambitions.
What they say
The team at Alpha really helped us to understand the fundamental drivers of ESG within our business and how to leverage these while developing others
Head of Responsible Investment, Global Asset Manager
Q&A with Vanessa Bingle, Lead in the ESG & Responsible Investment Practice
How are asset owner expectations shifting?
We have seen a massive shift in asset owner expectations around 3 key themes:
1) The focus has shifted from a desire for specialist products to an expectation that ESG is integrated across all investments
2) Clients are now demanding tailored ESG reporting on their portfolio, where organisation-level reporting on ESG approach used to be sufficient
3) Asset managers are being asked to 'show, not tell' their clients how they are integrating ESG, with a greater focus on meaningful impact than activity
How can organisations keep pace with rapidly changing expectations?
The first step is to understand what is coming down the tracks, such as regulator and policymaker agendas. The second step is to proactively understand what clients may want in the future, and shape their expectations around what good looks like. Reactively trying to accommodate client ESG demands when they start piling up is likely to leave them dissatisfied, and you scrambling to scale a manual process that was designed for 10 clients to 1,000.
Finally, investing in flexible foundations is key, through planning ahead and building robust and scalable data and technology infrastructure. Delaying action in favour of greater certainty in this case tends to mean just starting farther behind than others.
What does ‘good enough’ look like?
We see many of our clients grappling with this question, as yesterday's market-leading is becoming today's market baseline. Ultimately there is no single answer to this, as organisations' ESG vision and client demands vary, but with the pace of change, we can safely say that satisfying a minimum regulatory standard will not be good enough. We work closely with our clients to understand the appropriate balance of effort to meet client and regulatory demands based on their ambition and existing foundations.