Challenges in reaching sustainable investment objectives
On May 4th 2023, AustralianSuper hosted a breakfast roundtable with Australian asset owners, asset managers and investment consultants to discuss the latest offerings from SDI-AOP.
PGGM’s Hans Op’t Veld, SDI-AOP’s research director James Leaton, AustralianSuper’s Sandra Silea and HESTA’s Kim Farrant formed the panel to discuss SDI’s use-cases across reporting, portfolio construction and risk management and how the data is uniquely positioned to encourage the adoption of SDGs into investment processes.
Hans and James illustrated the motivation behind the asset-owner initiative, ongoing research efforts and new enhancements to the platform including the SDI Dashboarding capabilities and forward-looking, patent-based Innovation Outlook.
Attendees discussed the challenges in taking a forward-looking investment outlook, the nuances between different industries and regions, finding actionable insights through portfolio-aggregated analytics and understanding how both internal and externally managed portfolios are positioned with respect to their sustainable objectives. Further, the group discussed the role of the research advisory group to encourage continuous subscriber-driven improvement, the use of SDI’s taxonomy to extend their understanding of private or unlisted assets’ SDG alignment and a practical approach to using the data to build SDG target-setting and reporting functions.
