1. What does ESG mean to you?
Environmental, Social and Governance principles guide our responsibilities and approach in helping to protect and preserve resources, assets and communities for future generations. Throughout my career, over the last 30 years, I have actively participated in ensuring that ‘sustainability’ has taken an increasingly important role in the businesses that I lead, driven in part by growing awareness and expectations from all our stakeholders.
The current environment has further heightened this focus and has truly encouraged High Net Worth Individuals to re-examine where their wealth is being invested, reconsider the ‘purpose’ of their wealth and align their assets with their non-financial goals and aspirations. ESG principles have become the framework for measuring the sustainability and societal impact of an investment and I am pleased to see a proactive shift across all segments of the wealth management industry in making this a priority.
2. What does it mean for the Wealth Assurance sector?
Wealth assurance sits at the intersection of asset management, private banking and insurance. Our sector plays a central and active role in clearly defining, integrating and using ESG principles, to enable the creation of more sustainable investment portfolios.
We work in tandem with our clients’ trusted advisers and asset managers to provide them with wealth planning solutions that can create efficient diversified investment portfolios, which over the long term can have relevant ESG-related principles clearly defined, measured and reported. This is fundamental to Lombard International’s core purpose: to protect, preserve and pass on wealth across generations.
3. How is your company integrating ESG as part of its value proposition?
Our work on this topic is two-fold. First is our corporate citizenship, which, strongly connected to our values and ingrained in our culture, is our Group’s strategic intent in having a positive impact in the communities in which we work and operate in.
Second is the integration of ESG into our business operations, services and products. As a global provider of cross-border wealth, estate and succession planning solutions, we have a duty to support our clients and partners in investing their wealth sustainably. We help them navigate the right level of ESG integration, developing customised solutions that meet their requirements. Like many organisations, we are on our ESG journey. We will be releasing our inaugural ESG report later this year and look forward to sharing this with you.