Robeco is launching its Sustainable Investing Open Access Initiative to make its sustainable investing intellectual property available more widely.
“Traditionally asset managers tend to protect intellectual property and use it to add value to their proprietary investment processes. Yet the massive challenges our planet is facing require a different approach,” said Victor Verberk, the firm’s chief investment officer for fixed income and sustainability.
“We need to join forces to address these challenges properly. By opening up our SDG data to a broader audience we aim to contribute to improving quality and standards setting across the industry,” he added.
As a first step, clients and a group of academics will gain free access via a portal to the SDG scores of companies generated using Robeco’s proprietary SDG framework, which was developed in 2017.
The asset manager currently engages with 60 companies in Asia Pacific as part of the framework, and 10 clients are pilot users of the initiative.
At a later stage, the firm will make other sustainable investing data and IP available to more stakeholders, according to statement by the firm.
Robeco will seek feedback from stakeholders on the data, in the hope that this initiative will further enhance the robustness of the data and its methodology.
“Granting clients and academics access to our SDG data and methodology is only the first step,” said Carola van Lamoen, the firm’s head of sustainable investing.
“Furthermore, by publishing our SDG scores, we aim to enable academics to develop new insights. We therefore invite them to actively share their feedback on our SDG data and methodology.”
