Our latest developments on the Platform ESG tool
Colin Watling
First up, can you give us a quick reminder of what the tool does?
The tool is designed to aggregate independent Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data on the funds your clients are invested in. As their adviser you can assess your client’s portfolio against 9 ESG preferences. These include things such as carbon-emissions, waste, and deforestation. The tool will generate a red/amber/green rating for each. You can also review underlying involvement in areas which a client might want to exclude, such as tobacco, controversial weapons, and alcohol.
Our ESG client report helps you share this with clients in a graphical way. For example, you can use the tool to analyse how many kilograms of carbon a holding has generated over the last year. It will show simple equivalencies, based on how much your client has invested, such as how many miles the average car would need to drive to generate the same CO2.
The tool has been built to be agile, we do not expect the tool to stand still and have a keen eye on regulation and user feedback, ensuring we are leading the way in our support for advisers and clients on these important areas.
So what’s new this time round?
The first of two new developments we've launched is the ‘ESG sandbox’.
With the ESG profiler, you take an individual’s client’s portfolio and assess its ESG credentials. But what if you want to build a portfolio from nothing or assess your central investment solutions? That’s where the ESG Sandbox comes in.
Rather than finding a client and opening the tool, you can go straight into the tool and start to model new investment solutions. Alternatively, you can retrieve existing default models that you've built on the Aviva Platform and start to assess those as standalone portfolios. The ESG Sandbox also allows you to assess improvements you could make to the model. It is in essence an isolated testing environment that allow you to experiment with how different funds affect ESG credentials of an investment solution.
Our second development is ‘Search and Compare.’
This enhancement will allow you to explore the fund universe, looking for alternative funds that suit the ESG preference of your client and the exclusionary items they want to avoid.
Previously you could only review the ESG impact of a client’s holdings. Adding search and compare allows you to also look for options that will improve their portfolio’s ESG credentials. This enhancement allows you to explore the full universe of investment solutions available to you on our platform, to meet the ESG preferences of your client and/or the exclusionary items they want to avoid for each investment. Your client might want to invest in companies with a greater percentage of women in leadership roles, or make sure they've got less exposure to the tobacco industry. You can use search and compare to start exploring fund solutions to meet those goals.
Our guide to the ESG Profiler Tool gives you an overview of how to use to tool and its new features.
Who could these new features be most useful for?
The obvious answer is you, the adviser. Perhaps you are keen to get ahead of the interest and questions from your clients. Maybe you are an ESG specialist looking for tooling to help build bespoke solutions for your clients, or perhaps you are just interested in learning more about ESG. Whatever your situation, the Aviva ESG tooling has something to offer.