Insight and responsible investment

Abdallah Nauphal, CEO

Investing responsibly is an essential part of managing risk.

It is not about putting specific ethical considerations ahead of other criteria when creating portfolios.

For all our client portfolios we systematically consider ESG issues within our research process: this has helped us identify significant risks, as the evidence in our annual report demonstrates.

It’s also more than exclusion. When we identify material ESG risks in a company, we will engage with management in order to better understand the issues and exert influence on behalf of our clients to encourage improvements to its practices.

We also develop our tools where publicly available data is lacking. Our climate change and sovereign sustainability indices, and our ESG questionnaires, are examples of such tools to help our analysts better understand the most relevant risks.

Some issues are too big to tackle alone. We have collaborated with other stakeholders on topics such as climate change and cyber security.

Ultimately, I believe investing responsibly means considering the long-term impact on our clients, rather than simply focusing on the short term for our business.

What is responsible investment and how does it work?

Watch Joshua Kendall, Insight’s Senior ESG Analyst, discuss the methods and merits of incorporating ESG factors in analysis, engagement and investment decision-making.


Insight and responsible investment

  • Insight was a founding signatory to the PRI in 2006, the world’s leading proponent of responsible investment. Signatories to the PRI include investment managers and asset owners with trillions of dollars of assets under management.
  • We have been supporters of the IIGCC and CDP initiatives since our founding in 2002.
  • Insight has integrated ESG considerations into our decision-making processes for over a decade.
  • In 2019, Insight was awarded an A+ rating by the PRI for strategy and governance and our responsible investment approach to corporate and sovereign debt, as well as an A rating for our approach to securitised debt.
  • In 2016, Insight was given Tier 1 status by the UK Financial Reporting Council, recognising that we provide “a good quality and transparent description of [our] approach to stewardship and explanations of an alternative approach where necessary”
  • Insight manages ESG strategies including those with best-in-class, climate, positive impact and exclusion objectives and criteria. As at 31 March 2020 we managed more than €12.4bn in ESG strategies.1

Learn more about Insight

1Assets under management (AUM) are represented by the value of cash securities and other economic exposure managed for clients.