Tag: sustainable investing

ESG investing is a term that is often used interchangeably with sustainable investing and socially responsible investing. It began in the 1960s with investors excluding stocks or entire industries from their portfolios based on business activities such as tobacco production or involvement in the South African apartheid regime.

The concept of investing in environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-centric products is not new. Institutional investors have long modelled their investment strategies around socially responsible themes such as clean air and water, diversity, human rights, and workplace fair practices.

Greenwashing is the practice of giving the wrong impression, providing false information, or fabricating a story about how a company and its products, or an investment solution, are environmentally friendly or beneficial in an environmental, social or governance (ESG) context.

Modern Portfolio Theory, introduced by Harry Markowitz in 1952, has provided the lens for the way investments have been viewed for more than 60 years. In its most basic sense, it suggests the most efficient portfolio is one that maximises the return at a set risk level.

2020 will be remembered as the year where the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world taking the lives of many. This human tragedy was accompanied by an economic crisis as global economies shut down in an attempt to slow down the spread of the disease.

Investing is a personal choice and a number of influences will hold sway over where people put their money. A personal value system is one such influence and, for most South Africans, this appears to be non-negotiable. This is according to our recently released Global Investor Study 2020, an annual survey that canvassed the views of more than 23,000 wealth investors from 32 locations around the world

Last year, in what was an exciting first for the financial services industry, Foord Asset Management published a beautiful children’s picture book about saving and investing. The book, More Than Enough, has been translated into three languages and is now available in isiXhosa, isiZulu, Afrikaans and English.

Amongst the global elites attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, financial companies represent the biggest single industry attendance, which makes it clear that it’s all about the political power of money. Power, politics and finance in today’s economic systems go hand in hand.