Sustainable Finance, ESG, and CPR

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On November 18, 2021, we spoke with Chad Spitler of Third Economy to explore “ESG, CPR, and Sustainable Finance: How Should Companies Prepare?”

By 2025, ESG assets are expected to hit $53 trillion, roughly a third of assets under management. Yet, what exactly ESG measures, and how it redirects behavior in the real economy to advance sustainable outcomes, is still being heavily negotiated. Ensuring alignment between a company’s statements and their actions proves more difficult. Furthermore, there are numerous misconceptions on what ESG actually means.

In this module, we explore:

• How does ESG differ from values-based and impact investing?
• Why are investors focusing on ESG reporting and risk management?
• Where does CPR fit into sustainability? Why do investors care about political influence?

The Corporate Political Responsibility Taskforce (CPRT)’s Expert Dialogues are in-depth, recorded conversations with academic experts, stakeholder advocates and business practitioners to provide our members and other CPR champions with the expertise and context they need to develop principled, proactive CPR strategies. Specifically crafted as conversation-starters for business students, government affairs officers, sustainability executives, diversity, equity and inclusion leaders, investors, academic experts, and stakeholder advocates, each module is designed to spark constructive, non-partisan, principles-based dialogue without “being political.”

Third Economy works with institutional investors and financial advisors to build sustainable investment capabilities and with companies to improve their ESG performance. Their VIA3 framework includes a data-driven approach to measuring alignment, including alignment of company’s political influences with its stated ESG commitments. Prior to founding Third Economy, Chad spent 15 years at BlackRock, most recently as Managing Director and COO for the Corporate Governance & Responsible Investment team.

KEYWORDS:#CorporatePoliticalResponsibility #ESG #EnterpriseRisk #ESGMetrics