Partners Capital 2022 Sustainable Investing Report

Our Partners Capital Sustainable Investing Report 2022 summarises the progress we have made and the evolution in our thinking over the last twelve months. Prompted by the war in Ukraine, 2022 was a year when unresolved questions on ESG came to the fore. These questions include how countries trade-off energy security with transition, what it actually means to do ESG investing, and whether ESG investment approaches truly create impact and deliver financial returns.

At Partners Capital, we welcomed the questioning as it prompted us to sharpen our thinking on Sustainable Investing. Led by our new Global Head of Sustainable Investing, Dr. Michael Viehs, we updated our Sustainable Investing Policy to put greater emphasis on assessing and engaging with our managers on ESG integration, while retaining our minimalistic approach to exclusions. Our thematic paper in the report, “ESG at Critical Crossroads”, discusses the evolution of ESG and Sustainable Investing and summarises our view on the fundamental questions that the concept of ESG is facing.

The report also captures our fourth comprehensive 2022 Asset Manager ESG Integration Survey which included a number of new questions around climate change and engagement with underlying companies. While we are seeing a positive trend in the ESG integration approaches, we believe there is room for improvement in our managers’ assessments of climate change risks and opportunities. The ESG survey gives us an excellent barometer on where our managers are with respect to considering ESG factors in their investment process and allows us to prioritise our engagement efforts with managers where we can drive the biggest change.