ESG roundup: Redington fintech develops ESG manager voting record tracker

Ada Fintech, owned by investment consultancy Redington, has launched a “world-first” stewardship data solution that allows investors to access and track manager voting records as part of their ESG risk management research and analysis, it said.

A fund-level feature provides a look-through on each portfolio holding, including how a manager has voted on all shareholder proposals, while a ‘stewardship insights’ feature enables clients to look across their entire stewardship data set and discover the most important votes cast by managers.

Ada Fintech then applies a “significance rating score” to enable investors to pinpoint material insights such as hidden votes and potential manager conflicts.

Voting data is provided by impact-focussed fintech firm Tumelo.

Paul Lee, head of stewardship and sustainable investment strategy at Redington, said the launch of the solution “signals a material shift in providing holistic access to investors on critical and complex stewardship data points such as voting and engagement records”.

Adam Jones, managing director at Ada Fintech and Redington CTO, said: “In a world where investors are expected to put increasing emphasis on evidencing research and holding managers accountable on ESG engagement, gaining access to the relevant data and insight remains a challenge.

“We have a responsibility to change that, and so have ploughed our combined technology and investment consultancy expertise into developing a meaningful, useable solution.”

Fidelity International, also working with Tumelo, last month announced the launch of a stewardship platform, a ‘Hub’ intended to enable pension scheme clients and trustees to receive details of the stewardship activities of their fund managers.

Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation increases impact investing allocation

Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation is allocating 10% of its £1bn (€1.2bn) fund towards impact investments in what is thought to be the largest such allocation by a UK charitable endowment.

Its current impact allocation is £22m. The Foundation said that to achieve its 10% impact investments target it would accelerate its fund commitments to around £25m a year to funds focusing on health and its social determinants.

The updated strategy would also direct more capital from the endowment to “catalytic investment opportunities”, it said.

Across the impact investment portfolio the goal is to maximise the health impact while achieving a competitive average return that supports the endowment’s financial objective of annual returns of at least inflation plus 4%.

Ninety One, Newton ask oil and gas companies for just transition

Ninety One and Newton Investment Management have written to 100 of the world’s most influential oil and gas companies, urging them to consider and plan for the needs of their employees and the communities who stand to be negatively affected by an industry-wide transition to a low-carbon economy.

The letter is the first action by members of a multi-stakeholder coalition recently launched and facilitated by the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) to tackle the systemic lack of action by oil and gas companies to identify, prepare for and mitigate the social impacts of their low-carbon strategies.

This week’s investor letter begins a series of coordinated actions across stakeholder groups to incentivise positive change, according to the WBA.

The coalition will continue to engage with the 100 companies throughout 2022 ahead of the publication of WBA’s 2023 Oil and Gas Benchmark.

Survey: Nearly two-thirds of investor prefer active for ESG

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of investors prefer using active funds to integrate ESG, with equities (80%) over bonds (58%) being the most popular asset classes globally to gain ESG exposure, according to a new survey by Capital Group.

The survey was of 1,130 global institutional and wholesale investors, including pension funds, family offices and insurance companies, as well as fund of funds, retail/private banks and financial advisors, located in 19 markets around the world.

The survey also found that meeting client needs (27%) and making a positive impact (25%) are the most-cited motivations for adopting ESG.

However, North American investors attach much more weight to meeting client needs (42%), while European investors are most driven by making a positive impact (28%). Asia-Pacific investors cite improving performance (21%) as a primary reason for ESG adoption.

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