The BWBN report featured views from more than 15 senior investment leaders in buy-side businesses across Asia Pacific.
The report highlighted the importance of a successful ESG offering to clients, stating that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and impacts of climate change have heightened appetite for creating a more sustainable world through investment.
According to BWBN, ESG assets are on track to exceed $53 trillion by 2025, with the clock now ticking for the industry to prove it can manage these assets in an effective and transparent fashion.
The report highlighted that concern remains around the lack of a globally consistent and comparable standard for sustainability disclosures, which was creating “legal uncertainty” within the ESG investment space.
Failure to provide transparency and evidence of robust governance procedures in ESG investing was said to bring risks to firms through labels of “greenwashing”, according to the report.
“ESG should be about more than just meeting evolving regulatory and customer needs,” said Philippa Thompson, head of Bloomberg’s buy-side enterprise sales, Asia Pacific.
“BWBN’s executive members feel that sustainable investing needs to be central to how all buy-side firms operate and understand their investments in the future”.
BWBN acknowledged that the journey to a more ESG-friendly transformation would be difficult, however, they stressed the long-term benefit would be worthwhile.
Firms that are able to demonstrate a point of difference through an integrated approach to long-term ESG investment goals transparently would have the potential to lift their brand value, the report suggested.
“Even though a true sustainable mindset requires a major re-wiring of how organizations approach their investments, the transformation is ultimately a necessary and rewarding journey,” said Ms Thompson.
