A sustainable financial system on the agenda at Davos

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System will present its interim report in Davos this week. The report has been initiated to advance policy options to improve the financial system’s effectiveness in mobilising capital towards a green and inclusive economy, and the interim report profiles innovations in five areas including institutional investment.

Here it explores policy changes in three broad areas: capital allocation, investor governance and market incentives in order to align the assets of institutional investors with sustainable development.

The report’s authors are positive about progress, saying that 2015 is poised to be the year of sustainable development, with growing focus on innovative policies to mobilise the trillions of dollars needed for long-term inclusive wealth creation.

The report identifies a number of high potential areas which could contribute to this shift including three major asset pools – banking, bond markets and institutional investors – as well as two emerging policy tools – monetary policy and ‘environmental stress tests’.

The UNEP Inquiry into Design Options for a Sustainable Financial System, now entering the second half of its two-year work program, was created to explore emerging changes and reforms to the financial system that would improve its alignment with sustainable development. Its investigations to date have revealed many innovations in financial and monetary policy, regulation and financial market standards.

The Inquiry is now half way through its work program and will complete its research and engagement at the end of 2015.

Sponsored Content

 

To access the report, Pathways to Scale, click below

 Inquiry – Pathways to Scale

Leave a Comment

Sort content by

Dutch fund stumps up for collateral risk solution

In a sign of the paranoid times, huge Dutch pension administrator Mn Services has installed a collateral management offering, which forms part of a counterparty risk management suite tailored for this environment by Omgeo. mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

10 reasons why hedge fund activism will surge in 2009

Combating the ineptitude and excesses of poorly-managed company boards as the financial crisis progresses ensures that activist hedge funds are facing what could be their busiest year in the past decade. Here are 10 reasons why, originally put forward in Seeking Alpha. 1. Democrats are in the White House. In the Democrat tradition, the US

Fed announces custodian for Freddie, Fannie MBS program

The US Federal Reserve has chosen J.P. Morgan to provide custodial services for its program to purchase mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from now nationalised government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

Large hedge funds to dominate as banks, small funds withdraw

Large, diversified hedge funds with institutional-quality operations are more likely to survive their smaller rivals as the sector continues to contract, according to a research note by Morgan Stanley. mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

Invest with caution, beware Obama’s ‘Rubinesque’ finance team

Institutional investors should ‘slowly and carefully’ invest cash reserves in emerging market and high-quality US blue chip equities, says Jeremy Grantham co-founder of GMO, who expects imputed 7-year returns for the sectors to moderately outperform and be substantially better than their averages in the last 15 years. However, declines to new equity market lows should

Markets have not decoupled, but Asia still presents opportunities: Mercer

Despite Asian markets falling and redundancies occurring inline with the West, Mercer Investment Consulting has predicted that the Asian economy will continue to grow at 9 per cent this year. mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

Previous