PRESENTER: Hello and welcome to this Akademia learning unit on how to embed responsible investing within a centralised investment proposition. To discuss this, I’m joined today by Graham Finlay, he is Vice President of the Strategic and Technical Sales team at BMO Global Asset Management, and by Julia Dreblow, Founder of SRI Services and Fund EcoMarket.

Before I bring them in, let’s have a little look at the learning outcomes. Firstly, how to go about incorporating responsible investing within a centralised investment proposition or CIP; how to work out the clients’ responsible investing needs and outcomes; and how to keep on top of the rapidly evolving market for sustainable and responsible products.

Graham, let’s start with this concept of the centralised investment proposition. Now, you and I were on a panel discussion with Akademia recently where we talked about this in some depth and that is available on the Akademia site, but in a nutshell how would you define a centralised investment proposition?

GRAHAM FINLAY: Well, I would probably say that it’s more of a framework that is unique to the individual business and the individual firm. It’s not just solely about a product, it’s about kind of identifying who your clients are, what their needs, their wants, their characteristics, but then supporting that with the correct search tools, the back office systems, the planning tools etc. and building that really around your own unique business philosophy and tying that in with your own unique clients as well.

PRESENTER: And Julia, we’re talking about how you get responsible investing into a CIP, what’s a good working definition for responsible investing?

JULIA DREBLOW: OK. So there’s been lots of terms that are bandied around, ESG, responsible investment etc. and they do all have slightly different meanings, but broadly speaking what you’re talking about is funds that pay very significant and genuine attention to environmental, social, governance and/or ethical issues as part of their investment strategies.

PRESENTER: And is that synonymous with sustainable investing or is that something a little different yet again?

JULIA DREBLOW: So there are different strands. Sustainable investment is very often used as a catchment term in the same way as ESG is and responsible investment is. When you’ve got the word sustainability, you’re really talking about the long-term implications of where we invest and how we read our lines [unclear 0:02:26] etc. so the sustainability agenda, which is primarily about environmental and social issues. Whereas responsible ownership is more about the relationship that comes with investment, or companies have with the investment companies that they’re holding.

PRESENTER: Now, Julia, you’ve been working in this area for a number of years, can you tell us a little bit about where your business, particularly Fund EcoMarket, fits into this sort of ecology of responsible investing?

JULIA DREBLOW: So I’ve worked in this area for a really long time. I was first involved in ’91, I’ve specialised in it since ’96 and I launched Fund EcoMarket in 2010. Because at the time I could see that IFAs in particular and also wealth managers and others as we now use the term, really didn’t have a source of information to go to one place where they could understand different fund strategies. And people were obviously getting confused in the area, because they didn’t understand why all the funds weren’t the same. Now we do all have different opinions and different views with fund managers and investors. So it’s important to understand the variety of the landscape. So I tried to bring that all together into a single free to use database that basically fund partners pay to have their logos on, but it’s all free, so it’s just an information source on funds basically.

PRESENTER: So it’s a database of funds that you can slice and dice according to what their, if I say, ESG or responsible mandates are.

JULIA DREBLOW: Exactly. So we’ve got [unclear 0:03:50] classifications where we chop funds up and put them if you like into different buckets and say this is sustainability themed or focused, whereas this is more about ethics or an ethical focused fund or this one’s more about ESG. So we use those names to help people understand. But underneath that in separate quarters you can search for individual things, like avoids coal, oil and gas exposure or aims to deliver positive impacts, that kind of thing, so you can search funds that say they do specific things. And the information comes direct from fund managers. So we’re just pulling together information as a neutral source of all things to do with sustainable and ethical investment, and the same with financial advisers, so it’s not really members of the public, although it is open to everybody.

PRESENTER: And Graham, BMO Global Asset Management, asset managers on the whole aren’t known for providing a lot of technical support to financial advisers in the round. That’s usually something you’d associate more with the life and pensions offices. So what’s the, just in broad outline, what’s the BMO interest in this?

GRAHAM FINLAY: Well, part of the business I work for is actually being with adviser edge and what we actually saw in the credit rate that you mentioned [unclear 0:05:06] that the kind of technical support from a lot of the advisers out there is probably not what it was in the past. So we’ve kind of come up with as a team which I’m involved with, that kind of focus on financial planning, investments, practice management etc. and kind of bringing in expertise into these areas but also using that as something that they can go out and build relationships with advisers to support them in their own businesses. One of the areas that we’ve been focusing on very much over the last 18 months has been to help advisers maybe understand the kind of responsible investing marketplace a little bit more. Obviously being involved in this marketplace probably for the last 30-odd years so we have that reputation, we have that expertise that we hope we can give out to advisers that maybe have not looked into this marketplace as often as other parts of the marketplace in the recent past.

PRESENTER: And Julia, centralised investment propositions have been around for a number of years now, but when it comes to responsible investing, as an adviser, do you have to include it inside a CIP, is it best practice to get ahead of the regulation, where are we today?

JULIA DREBLOW: So, where we are today really is that it’s regarded as best practice; however, with the changes that are currently going through the FCA and this is mooted as we’re expecting [unclear 0:06:32] rules to come into the UK. We also know that that didn’t happen with this timing with Brexit, actually a couple of years ago now. But what we were expecting is that advisers will be told that they must understand the client’s sustainable responsible [unclear 0:06:48] investment aims and objectives and if there are to match those aims to individual fund options. So, not a requirement, very much best practice, being in the adviser ISO since 2005, I’d say probably half IFAs do and half IFAs don’t, but the extent to which they have integrate it really would be very substantial.

GRAHAM FINLAY: I mean just to kind of add to that point I think what we’ve certainly seen over the last probably 12 to 18 months is because people thought [unclear 0:07:21] was coming in, there’s a lot of people started to work towards trying to do that. I think since Brexit issue and it not coming or [unclear 0:07:29] from the UK or the FCA, I think there has been a change of people’s focuses, but I think the direction of travel certainly prove a kind of recent discussion papers and the post-COP26 I think people are now actually seeing their clients coming to them and wanting to speak about it. So they can really see a kind of catalyst for introducing it and having a solution or solutions or something within the centralised [unclear 0:07:51] proposition that reflects the whole philosophy to bring that investment proposition to life.

PRESENTER: What I was going to ask, Julia, as you talk with advisers, are they giving you any anecdotal feedback as to whether there’s greater demand for responsible investing coming from their own client base?

JULIA DREBLOW: As a general I would say advisers tend to say they’re not really asked for it unless they position themselves as being in that market. But once people start to put into their fact find processes and other documentation that this is an available option, a very significant number of people say they’re interested. Many advisers talking about how surprised they are at the level of interest and then of course they need more backup and more information, start directing to our resources and fund managers to explain what’s really available. So client demand doesn’t, even though people are very much more aware, they don’t understand investments or investment awareness needs that people don’t understand there’s such a thing as sustainable investment, or once they know the concept, it’s [unclear 0:08:56] very interested.

PRESENTER: Graham?

GRAHAM FINLAY: Well all I was going to say is that BMO have had this responsible range of funds for many years and probably the last number of years we’ve seen a real uptick in the use of the funds generally. So kind of speaking to advisers on the back of that and it echoes really what Julia was saying is that a lot of the time it had never been discussed as an option beforehand. And I think when advisers are beginning to raise that conversation with them when they begin to be comfortable with the conversation, clients are engaged. They want to see, know a little bit more about where the money’s going and what it’s doing. And especially with the profile being raised as it has been over the last certainly six months been rolled back and what’s all been said about COP, we’ve had the David Attenborough effect, with Greta Thunberg etc. more people are aware of it. More people understand that there could be options for them in how they invest.

PRESENTER: But when they’re having those conversations with clients, I’ll come to you on this one first Julia but I’d be interested Graham in your thoughts on it as well, are clients saying we want to do this because we think it’ll produce better investment returns over time. This is the way the world’s going, so you put your money, you know, you go with the momentum, or are they saying we’re beginning to realise that our investments bring with them social and environmental responsibilities that perhaps we hadn’t thought about before and now we’re aware of those, we need to tick those boxes as well.

JULIA DREBLOW: So I classify client’s intentions or aims or desires [unclear 0:10:30] into three groups. And it’s worth understanding because from my conversations with [unclear 0:10:35]. So we’ve got those people who just want to avoid things, personal values reasons that are maybe faith related, maybe just something that for some other reason, so personal values, this is who I am, I must do this because it’s what I believe. Then you’ve got those people that do it for financial reasons because they can see the way the world’s going, they know that climate change is a massive issue that’s going to hit business very hard and that strategies will have to change and that those companies are developing products that basically we help them to solve problems, will be attractive investments because those companies will grow. And then in the third group really is those people who do it because they want to change the world, they want to have a positive impact on the world around them. Although they’re looking at the future and saying boy we look decent without this, this is not on the right track, let’s change it, let’s specifically direct money towards companies that are better run, better managed, aware of environmental and social issues than they are, they’re voting specifically to try and make a difference. And that brings you into the two different strategies, in fact all of them, bring you into the two different strategies of both stock selection and the response of ownership side which is the voting and engagement [unclear 0:11:44].

PRESENTER: Graham, can I get your thoughts on that, are people buying it for the investment return or is this the case people might say actually I’m happy to get a slightly lower investment return but I’d like to hit these social and environmental goals that are clearly so important to the future, the society and the planet?

GRAHAM FINLAY: I certainly think there is probably those two camps. There is definitely in the performance angle, because if you look at the, there’s probably a growing recognition that the growth companies of the future are probably going to be linked to sustainability. So you’re looking at the regulation that’s come through both in the UK, Europe, globally, that sometimes it’s going to come down to the cost of capital when you’re actually looking at these businesses and the opportunity. So businesses are in that sustainability world, that are solving the issues that are evident that we have, there is real kind of investible opportunities so some people definitely see that. There’s others that actually as Julia said that might be looking to say that they want investments, they need to be invested but they want to make sure they don’t invest in certain areas. That’s kind of your kind of classical maybe more being ethical investor that might not want oil or they might not want pharmaceuticals or alcohol etc. So I think even the awareness of that has risen, because a lot of people didn’t know that that was an opportunity for them. So when they see these areas, then they might say I don’t want to be involved in that.

So we’ve certainly seen both camps coming through for the, and I say the word traditional kind of adviser and client, it might never have been a part of their conversation before. So what we have been seeing when we’re speaking to advisers is that the first toe in the water is maybe, when I put my ISA in I might look at that, [unclear 0:13:36] in a year’s time. So I believe that for a lot of people that’s the way that we’re coming into the market. It’s not I’ll switch everything on day one; it’s a process of people feeling confident going forward.

PRESENTER: Julia?

JULIA DREBLOW: I think adding to what Graham was just saying, one of the most important factors [unclear 0:13:57] is that actually a lot of people are a culmination of all of those different factors. People have got things that they believe in, that they want to invest in, they don’t want to invest in and things they want some change. So most people in the real world recognise that things are all a bit messy and a bit complicated and they want a bit of everything. That’s your average investor in the space I would say.

PRESENTER: Thank you. Well, given that backdrop, I wanted to move on now into how you actually go about incorporating responsible investing into a CIP. Graham, what are the things that as adviser you need to start by thinking about?

GRAHAM FINLAY: Well, it comes back to kind of the fundamental issues regarding centralised investment propositions, as what is your philosophy as a business and how do you want that, how do you want to run that. So it’s about understanding what your client wants as well. So it’s a bit of a minefield but obviously PROD, for example, it talks about understanding the needs, the wants of your underlying client, and for most clients they haven’t been asked what they want in this space before because it wasn’t something that was there. So we’ve been working with quite a number of advisory firms that are actually going out, sending out, say, surveys and you get letters from your own client bank to try and gauge what they want.

So it might be that they come back with a lot of exclusions. They might come back with saying that’s sustainability angle. So it’s then that company can take that information on board and say OK what are the needs of our client bank and therefore what are the types of products that we should be looking at, and obviously sites that can [unclear 0:15:34] gives them a really good opportunity to go in there and understand more before they maybe embed particular solutions into their centralised investment proposition. So PROD is a big part of it. It’s about understanding those needs and wants with that client, documenting that and putting it out into that philosophy that we have for that underlying investment.

PRESENTER: And Graham, I think one of you said that about 50% of advisers probably offer responsible investing, bit of a rule of thumb, and 50% don’t at the moment. So if you’re an adviser firm that hasn’t been doing this until now, should your first stage to be to go back as an adviser firm, Graham, and think about your own philosophy, you know, is there a radical change you need to have in the way you think about your business, or is it more a question, you can keep your existing philosophy, but it makes sense to go out and ask, you know, go back over your client base again and ask them what they want when it comes to responsible investing?

GRAHAM FINLAY: I think that’s a really good question in the fact there’s people that have been involved in the area for years and they, it is very much probably a passion of theirs, it’s very much been what their business has been built around. And that would be probably the 80/20 rule, well that might be that 20. That 80% is actually having developed what they think about this as an area, and some of those that looking at that might see it as that investment-led opportunity, that there’s good opportunities that are out there, and that might just work alongside more generalistic say multi-asset solutions, or they might actually move into a world that they actually think this is the way that everybody’s got to invest. And it might be different solutions they might use, they might be DFM partners they have or might be [unclear 0:17:14] portfolios.

So it is a big decision for firms to make because it will kind of drive their workload on how they actually deal with the underlying client. We’re seeing a whole raft of them. So people that might be looking at their clients but they use say a range of multi-asset solutions generally, they will probably want to replicate that in the world of sustainable investments, people that might bespoke [unclear 0:17:38] portfolios might want to replicate that in the bespoke world and the responsible world as well. So I think it’s really key for people to just sit down and really understand what they want as a business philosophy in the space.

PRESENTER: And Julia, what are your thoughts on that, particularly, I mean if I look at the funds universe, my kind of gut feel is that if you buy individual equity funds you can find quite a lot that’s sustainable or ethical or is responsible investing. The feedback seems to be it’s a little harder to do that in the multi-asset environment. But if you as an adviser are using multi-asset products as the core, do you actually have enough choice in there, can you match up what’s in those products with what your customers wants and needs and outcomes are?

JULIA DREBLOW: I would say it depends how the adviser wants to operate, but broadly speaking yes, there are funds that have got different asset types and there are fund portfolios like [unclear 0:18:31] ones which have got multi-asset portfolios. So you can build portfolios around this so there’s really no issue now around building a portfolio with different asset types in it, but there are plenty of funds in all of the different asset classes if you like. So there are some areas where there’s more compromise needed like property. And if you’re talking primarily fixed interest in equities, obviously there’s more in equities than [unclear 0:19:00] or you can go for a fund that’s already done that for you. So I would say no, there’s plenty of choice, it’s a bit of a legacy issue where people think these things are really hard and I think people just see that as kind of an easy out to not do it but actually, no, I work with a number of firms who’ve got different approaches on this. And it’s entirely possible if you spend some time on it and I mean obviously on Fund EcoMarket you can search by that kind of thing but, you know, that’s a legacy, it’s a legacy sort of way of thinking but there are options. But likewise I’m sure there will be more in the future too.

GRAHAM FINLAY: I mean on that point I mean we were out around about two years ago speaking to advisers as it were who were looking to embed proposition within their own business and that was very much with where do I go to find out this information? Whereas that, over the last 12, 18 months, that’s really changed. There’s so much more information that people can get now. There’s other businesses that have joined in the kind of the fund research world as well that weren’t in there beforehand. So I think that’s become a much more strengthened part of the investment universe and people can really, advisers can really look towards using their own rating agencies where they will have some sort of criteria that they can look at as well.

JULIA DREBLOW: Do you mind if I jump in here Mark and?

PRESENTER: Sure.

JULIA DREBLOW: I agree Graham that, some, be really careful of raising some [unclear 0:20:25] in this area. People are getting their fingers burnt and under the private sector you’ve got to understand what a fund does, and whether or not it matches correctly to your plan. So that means understand what the fund does, not understanding what someone thinks the fund does, so that’s why I guess with our site we’ve stripped it back to basics and we’re not passing judgement on things really, we’re just gathering information from the fund managers. Now, so you need to be careful because a lot of rating agencies, their data is incomplete, and if you read the small print, you’ll see things are incomplete. They’re not perfect, there’s issues around the calculation methods, and a lot of the time they’re making really well-informed judgement decisions, but that’s not quite the same as saying well actually this fund says it doesn’t invest here or it does invest there.

So really the two, I guess at best you can say work together, but be a little bit careful because a lot of [unclear 0:21:20] because you’ll be expected to meet the needs of your clients, and as you’d be aware I’m working in the helping the FCA with their thinking on this as part of a DLAG disclosure and advisory group, and all of it will be around getting funds to disclose what we do best, to say what they’re doing and give it some general labels. At the end of the day a client’s got to be suited to what’s on offer, so don’t try and take too many shortcuts I guess is what I would say there.

GRAHAM FINLAY: Oh no I totally agree with you’re saying there. I think what we’ve seen is that people are more interested in understanding exactly how they’re all put together and there have to be that [unclear 0:21:59], because I think that whole kind of greenwashing is the fear that we’re getting back from advisers is that they’re on the frontline of that. So they’re the ones that are speaking to clients about products that they might not do what it says it's doing. So I think it’s going, building up that relationship especially with groups that have been in this marketplace for a long time that can give people support as well and I think that’s really key.

JULIA DREBLOW: Yes for sure and look to pick up on the greenwash thing, a lot of people accuse funds of greenwashing when they haven’t actually read what the fund does. People have a set of expectations then they’ll expect all funds to be like say BMO or [unclear 0:22:41] funds that they’re very familiar with. And these other funds haven’t set out to do the same thing. They’ve set up to be more middle ground. The problem is a lot of the time their marketing department marketing thinking that they’re selling a BMO fund or a web fund or a [unclear 0:22:55] or something. They’re not, they are a different piece which is why we label and classify all differently within our tool. And if people can get to understand that you’re just going to have to put some legwork in and understand that these funds are different, then actually [unclear 0:23:11] evaporates and I’m not saying that there isn’t some really nasty over-exaggeration allocations, there is, but the majority of it is people who have no idea what the funds do because they’re not that interesting. They’d much rather just kind of have a knee jerk reaction that’s a lot easier and that doesn’t all help anybody.

PRESENTER: Well, it’s just, Julia, if I could put on a sceptical hat for a moment, if I were an adviser and I said do you know I’ve outsourced to fund managers and they’re good quality, so actually most of them are probably doing responsible investing anyway. They just haven’t wasted my time and my clients with all the jargon, as long as I’ve got a good existing CIP, I don’t need to worry about the responsible investing angle, that just creates extra inconsistency and extra work for everyone, would that view have a bit of truth behind it or is that a dangerous way of thinking about the world?

JULIA DREBLOW: It really depends what the client wants. So, for some clients, they just want to invest with a fund manager where they’re saying yes we vote all of our shares at AGMs. The fund manager hasn’t told you how they’re voting in shares but they’ve ticked the box and yes we vote our shares. And of course with additional disclosures around climate change etc. coming through, the standards hopefully will start to creep upwards. So for some clients that will be entirely appropriate. But for a client who has gone to someone for advice and said that they’ve got a real interest in sustainability and think the world needs to change, because at the moment we’re rushing off the edge of a cliff with climate change, with biodiversity laws etc. you need funds that pay real attention to real issues that probably employ people and [unclear 0:24:54] deep dive understandings of those issues and how they intercept with what individual companies, or the ones that we’re issuing are actually doing. So, no, there’s always going to be a cohort of people who are, could act in completely inadequate form but things are moving in the right direction generally.

PRESENTER: And Graham, if as an adviser you’re going back and talking to your client base and you’re thinking about how you segment them for the relevant CIP, how many segments should you have? I mean is everyone completely different, could you create four buckets and put clients into one of those four, how bespoke do you need to be?

GRAHAM FINLAY: Well, I certainly think that, as I said earlier, every business is unique, so everybody has a different client. So there’s certainly been examples that I’ve seen that people have maybe got three different types of strategies that they would use, maybe a kind of multi-asset and they might use maybe a MPS, but they also might use more of it on the discretionary side, be it where that client wants to sit. So I think that’s really key that it’s not one size fits all in this scenario, because there’s such a diverse nature of people’s sustainability preferences. And I think that comes back to the general point regarding the CIP itself is that the considerations of a traditional CIP might be outperformance, track record, availability, but on the point that Julia just made it’s about and if you have somebody that’s interested in this, how do you support that. So what’s the reporting aspect of it at the back end. It’s no longer just about performance, yes that’s completely key, but it’s also about what has that product done in relation to what you wanted it to do.

So I think grouping it is difficult. I think what will happen is most advisers under the centralised [unclear 0:26:52] propositions will have different themes that they will have and different opportunity sets they’ll have, but I don’t think it’s a hard and fast rule. That’s the great thing about financial advice and every client that comes to the door is different and certainly with the [unclear 0:27:05].

JULIA DREBLOW: So what I think the key issue here is making sure a client knows what they’re getting. So if an adviser has decided they’re going to offer one, two or three portfolios, and they’re having those three put in front of them and they know that that’s what’s on offer, as long as the adviser says look we could do other things, there are other things available, this is what we do, and the client understands that and buys into it then, well that’s absolutely fine. What we can’t have is people pretending that they’re doing completely bespoke advice and actually give everyone an identical portfolio, because clearly you do vary. And there are issues like animal testing for instance where frankly if someone’s got very strong views on that and you’ll probably have to design something yourself, so long as the clients knows what they’re getting, well informed decisions etc. then we’re pretty much safe in this area.

PRESENTER: But Julia, jumping back to the start of the process, if you’re an adviser and you’re sitting down with the client to find out what their objectives are around responsible investing, I mean we all know depending on how you frame a question will have a huge impact on the answer you get back, so how do you, I’m not sure if it’s the right way to express it but in the most value neutral way possible, ask your client what their values are?

JULIA DREBLOW: Sure so if you go back a long way in this industry to the 2005 adviser [unclear 0:28:26], the question in there was are there any sustainable results, sorry, environmental, social, governance, ethical or faith-based issues that you’d like us to take into account when deciding where you invest. Now that’s a bit of a mouthful obviously. But that’s how some people will still start off this conversation. Others will ask questions like is there anything you care about and then just go from there as a conversation and get you to document what it is they want. Some people use supplementary fact file questionnaires with lots of issues and asking people to tick what they’re interested in. What we do on Fund EcoMarket is we’ve got a staff finder tool where we try and direct people to the buckets and have indicator statements where you just draw out, OK this person’s mainly into sustainability, this person’s mainly into environmental issues or ethical values.

So you can start to segment a [unclear 0:29:16] if you want and then from that we tend to recommend that people then will find further once you know the general areas someone is interested in. If you’re starting with a blank sheet of paper [unclear 0:29:24] it’s pretty daunting for any adviser, because typically they don’t want to have to answer questions on the minutiae around individual issues, it gets quite complicated. So there are different ways of doing it so one very open question or look at styles or go straight in to detail on the minutiae.

PRESENTER: And Graham, if you’re not doing this as an adviser, or you’re not doing it properly, is there a danger you could be opening yourself up to a misselling claim, maybe three, five, 10 years down the line?

GRAHAM FINLAY: Yes well I wouldn’t say that advisers aren’t doing it properly; they just might not be giving the client…

PRESENTER: Sorry I’m not implying advisers aren’t but there might be a subsector that’s not.

GRAHAM FINLAY: No, they’re definitely not. Definitely, I mean the opportunity set is there for people. And the opportunity set if you’re thinking back to what I said earlier about these businesses that are going to benefit from investing and growing in those areas, then there’s an opportunity set that people might miss out on if they don’t look at this area. I think what you will see is that in a few years’ time, it will have to be something that everybody speaks about. So, if you’re not speaking about it now, your client might come back to you in 12 months’ time, two years’ time and go why have I not been doing this, why is my fund still run in a way that doesn’t actually align exactly with what I would like it to do? So yes there could be an issue. I think that it’s certainly something that you wouldn’t rule out.

PRESENTER: Well, Julia, this world of responsible investing is changing so rapidly and I think we’ve all seen that in the last couple of years, so what’s next on the horizon? What are some of the key things that as an adviser you’ll need to keep your eye out for over the next couple of years?

JULIA DREBLOW: OK so we’re [unclear 0:31:14] is that we’ve had the government refinance roadmap and various bits of regulations. As I say I’m on the advisory group with the FCA on this, and we are expecting it to become obligatory for advisers to talk to clients about this, round about the end of the year. So that’s the timescale that we’re looking at. But what you’ve got to remember is the backdrop for all of this, the FCA has been [unclear 0:31:38] or told by government that they’ve got to help us reach net zero. And we can’t allow any chinks in the chain so that it doesn’t get through to any investors. The message has got to be [unclear 0:31:52]. So absolutely there’s risks of people getting criticised if they fail to do that. This is going to move markets. So what we’re going to see is a great deal of change, things becoming a lot more sophisticated and people being really pushed to pay a lot more attention to this, because it will drive both financial [unclear 0:32:15] people are going to be more and more concerned about it also.

PRESENTER: And Graham, given how rapidly the world’s changing, even if a client has said to you, you know, these are what my outcomes are, this is where I feel comfortable what I think we should be doing that’s right when it comes to responsible investing, how often do you need to go back and check with them?

GRAHAM FINLAY: Well certainly when we’ve been speaking with advisers, people are telling us that it’s snowballing very quickly. So those annual reviews I would say that at least these are the times when we’re going to have to speak to people about this, because in 12 months’ time we’ll have had COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh and it’ll be back on the news for example, sustainability preferences might be now but what they have to do to employ [unclear 0:33:01] clients. So it might be that every single person that we speak to in the next, in 12 months’ time, they’ll have to through this whole process. But what it will happen is that this will continue to grow because if we’re going to meet the stretching targets of the [unclear 0:33:17] then things are going to have to move and move quickly.

So for advisers that are looking at it today for example saying well I can put off building what I need to do in my own business, be it the propositions, then six months’ time will come very quickly and that sustainability preference requirement might already be in there. So, if I could say anything, the businesses that we’ve seen incorporate it, it’s been a great thing for them because it engaged the clients at a different level to what they’d normally engage with. It’s opened up opportunities for clients. It’s a real business opportunity to get to know their client a little bit better. So, from the review part, it’s going to happen and it’s going to be regularly from now on that we need to keep on asking the same questions because the answer will begin to become different.

PRESENTER: We have to leave it there. Graham Finlay, Julia Dreblow, thank you for joining us.

BOTH: Thank you.