5 Tips for a Flying Start of your DJSI 2019 Cycle

Now the list of all eligible companies for its 2019 assessment is revealed, companies are getting ready for the 2nd of April, when the new questionnaire will be released. The added value of ESG benchmarking comes from the fact that it provides insights of where your company's sustainability approach is doing well, and which areas are up for of improvement. Especially the Dow Jones Sustainability Index provides a high level of richness in its feedback that can serve as drivers for the internal departments and pointers for the continuous improvement of your program. The overall goal is to accelerate your company's impact through a sustainability program with a clear direction, delivering positive results in the ESG benchmarks as a positive outcome.

Deepening your Focus for Better Sustainability Reporting

With the new year well on its way, company reports are under construction to inform stakeholders about their 2018 performance and to provide them with an outlook on the upcoming years. Although reports can seem like straightforward tools to inform investors about the impacts of a company over the past reporting period, companies can get stuck in the reporting trap. The reporting trap causes companies to lose focus on the long-term, leaving limited time to make a real impact and turn strategy into action.

Accelerating your Sustainability Strategy in 2019

The composer of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, RobecoSAM, broadcasted four webcasts by the end of 2018 in which key trends and developments of the Corporate Sustainability Assessment questionnaire (CSA) were discussed. In addition, RobecoSAM's expectations on reporting and performance were disclosed to help facilitate company preparations for the next DJSI cycle.

WEF 2019: Climate Change means Business

With the Globalization 4.0 themed WEF 2019 in Davos underway, the challenge of climate change has once again gained importance with sustainability leaders sharing their insights and concerns. And the clock is ticking faster than before; in October 2018 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a special report on the Impacts of Global Warming at 1.5°C, stating that the world only has 12 years to act if major negative impacts from climate change are to be avoided. To achieve this objective, more direction and speed is needed.

Turning ESG Results into Actions

Addressing the increasing awareness of ESG factors within the investment community, this resource helps to unravel the complexities associated with the outcomes of ESG ratings and identify a clear course of action for improving ESG performance over the long term.

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Keeping Up with the Rise of ESG Investing Strategies

As their customers are increasingly asking for greener portfolio options, investors are left struggling to integrate sustainability into their portfolio management strategies. The main challenge for investors is coming from ESG data itself, which has remained scattered, incomplete, incoherent, and unstructured.

Sustainability and the Art of Doing Less

Temperatures keep rising at an alarming pace. According to the UN weather agency, CO2 levels are at their highest in the last 650,000 years, and so are the average temperatures, with the world’s nine warmest years all having occurred since 2005. With the battle for sustainability heating up, banks such as ING and DBS are rolling out sustainability-linked loans and investors are increasingly factoring in sustainability performance in their investment decisions. As BlackRock, the globes biggest investment firm concludes: “There can be little downside to gradually incorporating climate factors into the investment process — and even potential upside”.

DJSI Expert Training 7 March 2019

Following successful previous editions, Finch & Beak invites you to our DJSI Expert Training on Thursday 7 March 2019 in Amsterdam, organized in collaboration with RobecoSAM. Global practitioners and experts on ESG benchmarking will meet to learn and exchange best practices with top level DJSI peers. We will convene in the Beurs van Berlage; the Dutch capital’s former stock exchange located at a stone’s throw of Amsterdam’s central station. 

5 Steps for Integrating ESG Risks into ERM

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report in 2018, four of the top five risks were environmental or societal, including extreme weather events, water crises, natural disasters, and failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Growing interest from investors seeking to understand how organizations are identifying and responding to ESG-related risks is pressuring companies to fully integrate them in their Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). To support organizations in this challenge, COSO and the WBCSD released the final version of the “Guidance for Applying ERM to Environmental, Social and Governance related Risks”. The guidance presents a pragmatic 5-step process to identify and manage ESG risks today while maintaining resilience to adapt and respond to the megatrends of tomorrow.