Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is: Moving Towards an ESG-Focused Future as a Company

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This is the last article in Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is, a series of five articles written in collaboration with Prudential that tackles the topic of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and takes a closer look at responsible insurance and investment.

In this instalment, our podcast host, Elias, talks about moving towards an ESG-focused future as a company with portfolio advisor Jeremy Butterworth from Wellington Management Singapore.

Adopting ESG factors into business operations is becoming more pressing, as more and more companies all over the world are doing so, in part driven by customer sentiment and behaviour.

As of 2020, the most commonly held stock by ESG funds include large cap smart beta names such as Microsoft, Alphabet and Visa. Wellington Management Singapore is no different, having been an early adopter of ESG factors from as early as 1933. To date, Wellington has $1 trillion in assets under management.

We sit down with Jeremy, who is also a specialist in impact investing, to find out more about ESG matters today — not just from the perspective of the fund manager, but also that of the retail investor.

In this podcast, we look at the extent of how fund houses such as Wellington incorporate ESG into its extensive research process, with a standalone team just dedicated to ESG alone. We also discuss concerns such as risk and opportunities, Wellington’s deep-rooted ESG strategy, the positive impact that ESG investing has on the world, and how investors can choose the right ESG investments while avoiding the pitfalls of “greenwashing”.

Find out more about Prudential’s ESG initiatives.

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