Supporting diverse approaches
As an asset manager you may want to influence companies, to integrate ESG issues into investment models or to create screened portfolios. Each approach offers different benefits and needs different research support services.
Meeting your particular objectives
The diversity of approaches arises as people measure corporate responsibility for ever wider uses within asset management. What works for one product may not work at all when applied to the firm's total assets. Stakeholder expectations of heightened responsibility and the multiple strategies and asset classes handled by a typical asset manager all require their own approaches to meet outcomes that have been set as objectives.
Looking for value and change
As an asset manager you may focus on the search for value in corporate responsibility, evaluating risks and opportunities on behalf of all your clients. Or you may seek to build an engagement strategy to support your governance work or to meet stakeholder expectations. Here the focus will be upon the choice of issues and companies to engage with, which approaches will work best, and how to communicate what you are doing to your stakeholders.
Client loyalty and multiple strategies
As an asset manager you may be creating products that build strong loyalty with particular client groups or seek to reinforce a strong corporate responsibility brand. Here screened portfolios are likely to be relevant. However, for an increasing number of asset managers the challenge is how to combine a number of these approaches to best effect.
CAER's role
CAER's research has developed alongside and driven developments in the responsible investment space in Australia and New Zealand, as well as internationally. Some of the corporate responsibility criteria are particularly suited to screened portfolios. Others (for example like the Convention Watch service CAER can offer) fit particularly well with detailed engagement on an issue already in the media. Over the last ten years, most of the new areas of research launched start with a risk assessment and then look at how companies are managing that risk through their policies, systems and reporting.
CAER can also offer toolkits to help investors tackle Climate Change and implement the Principles of Responsible Investment (PRI) .Taken together with CAER's responsible investment service and use of the EPM software, along with the experience of our CAER team and that of CAER's international global partner alliance, we believe CAER is in a strong position to support each client in finding the best combination of strategies to meet their responsible investment needs.
