5 Key Recommendations for Sustainable Investors

The following first appeared on Perspectives Online.

Irina Gilfanova, Associate Director of Private Equity Sustainability at Schneider Electric, shares key recommendations for investors who are embarking on the journey of sustainable finance. Sustainable finance is key to fostering the ESG transition, and these recommendations are designed to help advance both the investor and investee sustainability agendas.

First of all, start with your ESG strategy. Establish targets and make sure that they are ambitious. Aim high. We have to deliver significant results.

Second of all, streamline disclosure requirements for your investees. There are a lot of established good practices and frameworks. Make use of those. Make sure you don't duplicate your requests and do not send too many requests and surveys to make it a burden for the companies.

Streamline disclosure requirements for your investees... Make sure you don't duplicate your requests and do not send too many requests and surveys to make it a burden for the companies

Third one is to make sure that ESG is integrated throughout the whole investment life cycle and start early on. Start with due diligence process. Make sure that you understand the potential risks and opportunities for your investees to create some impactful and meaningful roadmaps for them.

Make sure you adopt a test and learn mindset

The another one is to make sure you adopt a test and learn mindset. There are a lot of challenges. There are a lot of ways how you can deliver the results, establish some partnerships, embrace lessons learned and make sure that there is a cooperation among the sectors and among industries to ensure and foster ESG transition.

Keep going and make sure that you go fast.

Last but not least, keep going and make sure that you go fast.

Again, there are many different questions that still have to be answered. There is always some imperfections and there is a need for certain incentives in place. Don't wait for them. Engage with your investees today to make sure you can deliver the most impactful results. Embrace your fiduciary duty to deliver fast and fair transition.