Investing with Impact: Socially Responsible Investing in the Non-Banking Financial Sector
VSJ Fincap
We want to reach out to the Next Billion Indian entrepreneurs and help to fulfill their dreams.
A growing number of investors want to encourage companies to act responsibly in addition to delivering financial returns.
The terms environmental, social, and governance (ESG), socially responsible investing (SRI), and impact investing are often used interchangeably, but have important differences.
ESG looks at the company's environmental, social, and governance practices alongside more traditional financial measures.
Socially responsible investing involves choosing or disqualifying investments based on specific ethical criteria.
Impact investing aims to help a business or organization produce a social benefit.
ESG
ESG refers to the environmental, social, and governance criteria for evaluating corporate behavior and screening potential investments. The ESG evaluation supplements traditional financial analysis by identifying a company's ESG risks and opportunities, which is to say the money they stand to lose by not acting on ESG risks and they money they stand to gain from seizing ESG opportunities. Financial returns remain the primary objective of ESG investing.
Some commonly-considered ESG factors.
Environmental –?
? Energy consumption
? Pollution
? Climate Change
? Waste production
? Natural resource preservation
? Animal welfare
Social –
? Human rights
? Child and forced labor
? Community engagement
? Health and safety
领英推荐
? Stakeholder relations
? Employee relations
Governance –
? Quality of management
? Board Independence
? Conflicts of interest
? Executive compensation
? Transparency and disclosure
? Shareholder rights
SRI
Socially responsible investing goes one step further than ESG by eliminating or adding investments based solely on a specific ethical consideration. For example, an investor might opt to avoid any mutual fund or exchange traded funds. that owns the stocks of firearms manufacturers. Alternatively, an investor might seek to allocate a fixed proportion of their portfolio to companies that donate a high proportion of their profits to charitable causes.
Socially responsible investors might also avoid companies associated with:
? Alcohol, tobacco, and other addictive substances
? Gambling
? Weapons production
? Human rights and labor violations
? Environmental damage
Impact Investing
In impact or thematic investing, positive outcomes are of the utmost importance—meaning the investments need to produce a tangible social good. The objective of impact investing is to help a business or organization achieve specific goals beneficial to society or the environment. For example, an impact investment might fund nonprofit research in clean energy.