Videos &
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Finance Frontiers

We’ve brought key players in banking and finance together to highlight how organisations, projects and activities are making a difference.

Banks and their employees are no strangers to disruption, having dealt with the financial crash, regulatory reforms, the birth of new competitors and now a global pandemic.

This documentary series, produced by Zinc Media Group, features the cutting-edge developments and innovations in finance. We will be featuring the people, businesses and organisations leading the charge into a new era of banking, with a special focus on ESG.

Harrison Street – The social dividend

Harrison Street is one of America’s biggest landlords, focused on alternative real estate. In this film we travel to Portland, Oregon to hear how ESG is at the heart of all of its decision making.

Community is key, according to Harrison Street’s Chief Impact Officer, Jill Brosig, The ‘S’ in ESG – the transformative power of ‘social’ – is something we explore on a visit to The Springs retirement community at Lake Oswego.

An attitude to creating Well Living opportunities defines Harrison Street’s activities in managing its $49 billion portfolio of assets. Included in that, as well as senior housing, is management of student accommodation assets serving more than half a million young people attending college globally. Harrison Street applies the same ESG priorities to its military and medical housing and offices too. All spaces that offer potential for positive change, it says.

Hinkley and Rugby: The heart of the Midlands

Hinckley and Rugby Building Society are the market leader in thinking of how to engage with customers and the local community concerning climate risk and climate opportunity.

Hinckley & Rugby decided to position itself as a leader of businesses on a local level through its climate strategy. The reasons for this focus, that began in 2019, comes down to its CEO Colin Fyfe and Operational Risk and Climate Manager Clare White, who understood the need to begin a journey towards sustainability through addressing both the company’s environmental footprint and those of the five thousand mortgages that it holds.

We visit Hinckley and Rugby’s HQ and a local school where children are being taught about how homes can be retrofitted to mitigate climate change, and see the children plant a tree in the school grounds.

SS&C Advent: pioneering tech for rebalancing solutions

SS&C Advent enables clients to gain control and provide clarity over all their ESG investments. They create portfolios that are tailored to each client’s individual values.

They say that isn’t a ‘nice to have’. It’s a tech platform offering that provides the sort of transparency investors are now absolutely demanding.

For Asset Managers and Wealth Managers that means everything they need to run their businesses – including portfolio management, rebalancing, client portal, data management, outsourcing, and fund order management.

SS&C Advent improves accuracy and reduces risk in processing complex instruments. In a fast-paced environment, Alternative Investment Managers require a high level of operational efficiency and real-time data access. Managing complex investment vehicles, multiple investment strategies, and tiered fund structures is key.

These firms are supported by a sophisticated platform that provides comprehensive instrument coverage, a full general ledger and market leading integration tools.

Investor accounting solutions to diversify strategies and drive business growth.

SSGA: Climate change – long term values

What is the financial service industry doing to address climate change? This film delves into SSGA’s responsibility to its clients and to the world at large.

SSGA advise their clients in financial materiality, in the face of climate change long term values are changing and there is no denying that change.

The financial service industry needs to recognise that its reputation is affected by events and needs to be constructive for their clients, portfolio companies and policy makers.

Sustainable Finance in Action

We’ve brought key players in banking and finance together to highlight how organisations, projects and activities are making a difference.

Nasdaq

Meet the people behind the world's first B2B marketplace for carbon removals.

Fredrik Ekström, president of Nasdaq Stockholm and Chairman of Puro.earth, takes us from Nasdaq's offices to the Puro.earth HQ in Finland. And we visit the deep forests outside Tampere to see how Carbofex - a supplier of biochar carbon removals - are creating good out of wood.

Standard Chartered: Here for good

Standard Chartered supports sustainable and responsible growth, creating wealth and jobs across some of the world's most dynamic regions. Growth in these markets is leading to rapid urbanisation, creating increased need for infrastructure and technology.

Guided by their brand promise 'Here for good', Standard Chartered's sustainability philosophy sets out how they integrate sustainability into their organisational decision-making.

Redington: Positive changes for people and planet

Redington - a leading independent investment consultancy - shares their sustainable investment journey. They show us how they built and implemented their seven-point climate action plan, and integrated sustainable investment practices across their business.

They also highlight the importance of asset owners in using their capital to effect positive change - for the benefit of people and planet.

Twelve Capital: financing the transition

Companies need funding and insurance to manage risks from climate change. Twelve Capital contributes by investing in companies that are financing the transition to reorient capital in a sustainable manner.

Steering capital in the right directions isn't just doing 'the right thing', but presents opportunities for generating value for investors.

WHEB: Driving Impact in the real world

WHEB only invests in businesses that are solving sustainability challenges.

So they've developed a tool called the 'Impact Engine' which analyses products in terms of the environmental and social impact they have in the real world. WHEB also has an Impact Calculator, which brings to life the real-word impacts associated with their clients’ investments.

Sarasin & SRI: The finance industry is heading one way - towards sustainability

As a specialist in sustainable finance, Julia Dreblow from SRI Services developed a database tool to help financial advisers understand their clients' ESG concerns.

Aegon: a lower carbon world by default

Default funds are a big part of the transition to a lower carbon world.

This film shows how industry innovation and collaboration helped Aegon UK's route to net zero. And it highlights how Aegon UK's partnership with Aegon Asset Management and the Global Ethical Finance Initiative (GEFI) to introduce the new Aegon Global Sustainable Sovereign Bond Fund during COP26.

Novia Financial: making sustainable investing more accessible

From Acre, we hear about recruitment's essential role in achieving change - and in keeping pace with an expanding and fast evolving sustainable finance landscape which has new and exciting career opportunities

LINCOLN INTERNATIONAL: Sustainable finance in action – unlocking opportunities in ESG investment

Private markets are the largest part of our global economy and therefore have both the power and the responsibility to change the world around us. As private companies evaluate their role on people and planet, ESG has rapidly become a focus for the private equity community, which has taken meaningful steps to advance these issues in response.

From hiring experts to measure against ESG across their portfolio companies to incorporating components into due diligence processes, those involved in the investment lifecycle are developing an increased commitment to these goals.

APAM: Sustainable finance in action – Challenging Real Estate Norms

The real estate industry is responsible for 40% of global carbon emissions, so it’s essential that everyone in the industry attempts to make a difference and rectify the damage.

Catella APAM is a specialist real estate asset manager, with social conscious embedded in everything it does. The team recognises the important role real estate plays in the communities in which the company operates and believes that environmental, social and governance initiatives represent a major component of this role.

APAM understands that ESG is not just about the environment, it’s about people, and is therefore important in improving lives by making the world better to live, shop, and work.

GAM: Sustainable finance in action – Thinking beyond the obvious

Asset and wealth managers control more than USD 110 trillion of capital and how these assets are managed will be key to whether or not we are able to achieve the shared global goal of net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner. Asset managers need to be at the forefront in driving that change, and designing solutions to help clients navigate the low carbon transition.

In 2021, GAM Investments joined the Net Zero Asset Manager initiative and adopts a high conviction active approach to investing, with the goal of both delivering for investors and having a positive impact on the real economy. In this video, GAM discusses investing in green bonds from European financials as a means of helping to address climate change, one of the largest and most pressing risks for the global economy, as well as the alternative investment theme of luxury, which is resonating well with the shift to more sustainable consumption patterns among the rising Asian middle classes, given the sector’s ethos of ‘buy less, buy better’.