‘Dramatic benefits’ from integrating SRI

His twenty years of experience in the field demonstrate that companies that successfully integrate SRI issues are indeed better-performing. “I can say without fear of contradiction that all the research we have done, and all our current experience in running portfolios suggests very strongly that — both at the level of performance, and of risk reduction — there are dramatic benefits available from doing this type of integration.”

This type of performance benefit is only natural, says Dr. Kiernan. The world is changing dramatically, he says.“Whether it is population, water, climate —all of those issues are transforming the basis of competitive advantage for companies and it is common sense that they be explicitly taken on board in investment processes.”Companies that do so are better managed, more nimble, agile, and farsighted and "all things considered, they should be outperformers…to me this is matter-of-fact, but it remains an almost heretical view” in the world of investment.

References

This video interview was recorded in New York City on December 13, 2011 during the ESG USA 2011 Conference “Investing for a Sustainable Economy,” organized by the Responsible Investor in association with Bloomberg.

This article may be reproduced according to our terms of use with attribution (and link, if online) to www.tias.edu. To be cited as: “‘Dramatic benefits’ from integrating SRI”, Mathhew Kiernan, www.tias.edu, May 2, 2012.

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Inflection Point Capital Management