Fact Sheets and Guides

This toolkit serves as a primer for understanding nature-related risks and opportunities and supporting investors to assess, engage and take action.

The rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents both opportunities and challenges for investors, especially regarding human rights impacts (referred to as ‘AI-related human rights risks’). This toolkit is designed to help investors understand and navigate the key challenges, risks and human rights risks/issues in relation to AI.

Global regulators have called for industry standard setters to develop common terms and definitions to ensure consistency throughout the global asset management and wealth management industries, in a manner that contributes to efforts to eliminate greenwashing.  

In 2023, RIAA worked with the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, the CFA Institute, and the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance to create global industry guidance that aims to enhance clarity and consistency in the language used within responsible investment, specifically on:

• Screening

• ESG integration

• Thematic investing

• Stewardship

• Impact investing

This toolkit offers essential frameworks and insights for companies and investors to support human rights in conflict-affected regions like Ukraine and Myanmar, and what they can do before, during and after conflict.

Model portfolios provide advisers with an opportunity to cater to clients with different risk profiles using professionally managed portfolios, which may also offer additional benefits such as capital gains tax efficiencies and the ability to customise the portfolio. However, when we consider an additional overlay of ESG factors, we may find that these portfolios do not meet the client’s full expectations.

This guide provides an overview of the steps that advisers should consider when looking at using multi-asset model portfolios. This guide could also be useful for any groups considering creating their own in-house portfolios.

Nature’s conservation is essential to maintaining the systems and processes that support life on Earth. In an effort to conceptualise nature’s value from an economic perspective, the terms natural capital, ecosystem services, and nature-based solutions have begun to permeate the contemporary discourse. To help investors navigate and employ these increasingly mainstream, and too often conflated, terms, members of RIAA’s Nature Working Group put together this summary explaining what they mean and their relevance to the investment community.

The introduction of the TNFD framework is vital in enabling market-led change in how financial risk identification and management are reported, as well as creating positive outcomes for nature and economic stability. This summary, created by members of RIAA’s Nature Working Group, helps support investor understanding of, and preparedness for, the TNFD by providing a summary of the framework and key information related to the TNFD and its objectives.

The human rights impacts of climate change are already occurring and are falling disproportionately on the most vulnerable sectors of society – children, the elderly, Indigenous communities across the world, Pacific Island populations and others in low-lying coastal areas, people with disabilities and those living in poverty.

Human rights issues in supply chains can be very complex and frequently these issues occur beyond the visibility of investee companies, sometimes despite the best intentions of investee companies to manage these.

This is the second edition of this toolkit, an initiative of RIAA’s Human Rights Working Group. The purpose of this toolkit is to help investors to engage constructively with the intention to encourage better practice from companies, thereby reducing human rights risks in supply chains. This toolkit focuses on practical engagement points with a business rationale.

Whether driven by disdain or idealism, peoples’ attitudes towards capitalism are dramatically shifting. It has long been said that money makes the world go round, but it now seems people want to see money applied to put the brakes on – whether that be to prevent irreversible climate change or stop growing global inequality.

This Financial Adviser Guide to Responsible Investment seeks to demystify responsible and ethical investing by breaking down the key components of responsible investing to help you better understand the demand in the market, how you can consider your clients values along with practical steps to getting started.

An initiative of the RIAA’s Human Rights Working Group and First Nations Peoples’ Rights Working Group, this toolkit supports investors to manage the increasingly material issue of Indigenous heritage protection.

The toolkit contextualises the long-term valuation impacts of poor management of relationships and cultural heritage, details red flags to look out for in companies’ disclosure and engagement practices, outlines traits of leaders vs. laggards, and for those ready to delve deeper, provides detailed sub-topics for engagement with companies.

Foundational to best practice investment management, ESG integration is a responsible investment approach that involves the explicit inclusion by investment managers of environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities into financial analysis, investment decisions and stewardship.

Impact management and measurement (IMM) is fast becoming a key component of responsible investment practice, as the emphasis extends beyond process and policy to real world outcomes – positive and negative – being generated through investments.

Various impact management tools, standards and conventions have emerged which are useful to investors when developing their own frameworks, as well as for analysing the companies and assets they invest or are considering investing in.

Australia’s FASEA Code of Ethics is designed to shape and reinforce ethical conduct of financial advisers and to encourage a deeper engagement by the adviser with their duties to their client as well as wider society. This briefing note explores how the Code relates to and embeds responsible investing’s relevance to the provision of financial advice. 

Summary

The body of evidence continues to stack up – nationally and globally – showing that responsible investments typically achieve stronger risk-adjusted financial performance than their peers, consistently outperforming against benchmarks over short-term and long-term time frames. 

Summary

Responsible investing, also known as ethical investing or sustainable investing, is a holistic approach to investing, where social, environmental, corporate governance and ethical factors are considered alongside financial performance when making an investment.

There are many different ways to engage in responsible investment, and most investors use a combination of strategies including negative or positive screening; environmental, social and governance (ESG) integration; and impact investing.

Anyone can be a responsible investor, whether they are individuals choosing where to put their retirement savings; a trustee of a trust or foundation; or an institutional investor such as a super fund, fund manager, bank or asset manager.

To divest or engage? It’s been a hotly debated discussion for many years, with many responsible investors stating a preference to stay invested in companies favouring corporate engagement and shareholder action over divestment to improve the behaviour of companies.

But what exactly is it? How does it effect change in company behaviour and how do we know if it’s working? 

As responsible, ethical and impact investing continues to grow, and as more consumers expect sustainable options for their super and other investments, there’s been a rush to satisfy demand. Sometimes this can result in greenwashing – both intentional and unintentional.

Find out how to avoid the pitfalls and label your product appropriately.

Climate change, largely created by the burning of fossil fuels and release of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, is the most pressing issue of our time.

From excluding financiers of new reserves, or petrol station owners to divesting all companies with any involvement with fossil fuels, responsible investment can be approached in a number of different ways.

This guide was prepared by RIAA’s Human Rights Working Group and the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) to provide a framework for investor reporting on modern slavery under the Commonwealth Modern Slavery Act 2018.

It provides broad context on matters investors may wish to consider in preparing their modern slavery statements and should be used in conjunction with the guidance provided by the Australian Border Force (Government Guidance).