The latest in the spheres of socially responsible investing, impact investing, and other ways investors and shareholders are asserting their desire for ethical investment options.
Ahead of his attendance at this week’s New Metrics ’17 conference in Philadelphia, we caught up with Bob Mancini, CEO of the Rhode Island Society of CPAs (RISCPA), to learn more about why the concept of sustainability is finally being recognized in the finance world, and what this means for the future of the industry.
Corresponding with the kickoff of COP23, the World Water Council (WWC) has shed light on the current state of water infrastructure and what it means for mitigating climate change and delivering on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The key takeaway: water infrastructure investment must triple to €255 billion annually in order to meet sanitation targets and tackle climate change.
HSBC is making moves to tackle climate change, unveiling five new commitments aimed at helping drive the transition to a low-carbon economy. A major component of the financial giant’s climate push is a pledge to make $100 billion in financing available for sustainability projects by 2025.
Building on its larger social impact strategy, which seeks to support the growth of micro and small enterprises around the world, Visa has launched the newly-incorporated Visa Foundation. As its first order of business, the Foundation has made a financial commitment of up to $20 million to Women’s World Banking.
Putting a price on carbon is becoming the new normal for major multinationals, with almost 1,400 companies[1] factoring an internal carbon price into business plans, according to a new report from CDP. This represents an eight-fold leap in take up in the last four years, compared to just 150 companies in 2014, and includes more than 100 Fortune Global 500 companies with collective annual revenues of US$7 trillion[2].
This summer came to a calamitous end with the rapid succession of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, Maria and Nate, two earthquakes in Mexico, rampant wildfires currently raging across Northern and Southern California, and countless other natural and man-made disasters across the globe.
P2Binvestor (P2Bi), a leading marketplace lending platform that offers crowdsourced, asset-secured lines of credit to growing companies with big ambitions, is catalyzing the growth of mission-aligned business with the launch of a first-of-its kind bank partnership program. The new program provides startups and emerging businesses an innovative way to quickly access capital while allowing banks to increase their addressable market and improve their conversion rates.
Salesforce Ventures, the corporate investment arm of Salesforce, a global leader in customer relationship management (CRM), has launched a $50 million impact investment fund to accelerate the growth of companies using Salesforce technology to address challenges across workforce development, equality, sustainability and the social sector.
With the backing of a group of impact investors, Singularity University, a global community with a mission to educate, inspire and empower leaders to apply exponential technologies to address the world’s most pressing challenges, has launched SU Ventures, a program designed to address the more long-term needs of impact-focused startups.
Earlier this year, JetBlue released its 2016 environmental and sustainability report, accompanied by a white paper produced according to the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standard for the airline industry, which covers material environmental, social and governance (ESG) information of interest to investors.
Fairphone, a social enterprise and modular smartphone producer spurring a paradigm shift in the technology industry, has secured €6.5 million to scale up its mission to make fair, responsible electronics mainstream. The investment will enable Fairphone to continue innovating in the areas of material sourcing, production, distribution, recycling and product longevity.
Reprinted with permission. This article was originally published in the 25th Anniversary issue of GreenMoney Journal.
Earlier this week, French beauty giant L’Oréal announced that it has concluded the sale of The Body Shop to Brazilian sustainable personal care group Natura Cosmeticos.
Part Five in a 10-Part Series by Reporting 3.0. See previous parts below. The 2013 launch of the Integrated Reporting <IR> Framework from the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) swung a double-edged sword through the disclosure field:
As socially progressive investors, we perform our own due diligence when we consider a company and its ethical, moral and social standing before it is added to our portfolio. Investors must ensure that they properly vet their investments on a large set of data and criteria. This is especially relevant as socially responsible investing (SRI) – directing capital toward companies limiting negative environmental impact and progressing social goals – continues its evolution into the mainstream.
To help companies assess exposure to evolving regional carbon-pricing mechanisms, Trucost, which is part of S&P Dow Jones Indices, has launched the Trucost Corporate Carbon Pricing Tool.
Certified B Corporation Thread is taking its commitment to end poverty by creating dignified jobs and responsible, high-quality fabrics to the next level with the announcement of a partnership with nonprofit Kiva. The startup, which transforms plastic bottles from the streets and canals of Haiti and Honduras into responsible fabrics, has used Kiva’s direct-to-social enterprise loan program to raise $10,000 for its zero-interest micro-loan program.
This week, TruValue Labs unveiled its ESG Momentum™ score – the first ESG indicator that leverages artificial intelligence, big data and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board’s (SASB) materiality framework – as part of its Insight360™ suite of products. The score reveals the positive or negative direction, or trend, of ESG performance based on daily data.
Bringing together financial institutions, investors and intermediaries to continue catalyzing the impact investing moment, the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance has launched its expanded network of impact investing leaders. The Alliance was founded last year by representatives from philanthropy, business and finance to drive impact investing in the U.S. by increasing awareness, fostering deployment of and demand for impact capital across asset classes globally and partnering with policymakers and other stakeholders to build the impact investing ecosystem.
Recently, on National Insurance Awareness Day, I reflected on the previous week, when California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones keynoted at the Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) lunch meeting.