INSTITUTIONAL ASSET MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY
Telling the Story of ESG Integration
We learned how a global asset manager is addressing some of the limitations of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings by creating its own fundamental approach to integrating sustainability into its investment process. We then told this unique story through a white paper and interactive e-book.
Client’s Challenge
As environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors become increasingly important to institutional investors, the limitations of ESG ratings provided by MSCI, Sustainalytics, and other research providers have become more apparent, particularly in emerging markets and small cap stocks. A global asset manager is working to fill this void by developing its own sector-specific materiality assessments of ESG considerations and by creating a proprietary ESG rating system that incorporates the firm’s first-hand assessments rather than simply relying on corporate disclosures. The asset manager needed to tell the story of this bottom-up approach to ESG integration.
WFC’s Solution
We interviewed the asset manager’s analysts and product specialists to learn how the firm is integrating ESG considerations throughout its fundamental research process. We then created a white paper and interactive e-book that frame these efforts within the firm’s impressive heritage as a bottom-up stock picker and highlight examples of how looking beneath the surface of a company’s ESG disclosures reveals alpha-generating opportunities for investors.
