41: The Sustainable Investment Dilemma - Amy Clarke, Troy Mortimer & JP Dallmann

On today’s episode we are doing something different: we are sharing with you a session that I called “The Sustainable Investment Dilemma”, a conversation I hosted as part of The CogXtra weekly event series, covering in this opportunity the subject of “Sustainable Business – How Industry is addressing the Climate Crisis”. In our case, the financial industry.

As my co-panellist I brought together two guests:

Amy Clarke, who is Co-Founder & Chief Impact Officer of Tribe Impact Capital, and 

Troy Mortimer, who is Responsible Investment and ESG Advisor at ILA & Partners. 

If you did not know them already, I highly recommend that you also listen to the individuals episodes we recorded previously. You can also read her Bios at the end of these notes. 

As part of the event I also shared a short Video introduction to the recently launched film “Our Planet: Too Big To Fail”, which is a 42-minute film that explores the risks of inaction, the impact of investing-as-usual, and the role the finance sector can play powering a sustainable future. I wanted to bring this to your attention to ask you to watch it and share it, so we can all take proactive actions! You can watch the video on ILA & Partners’ website - Media section: http://bit.ly/ILAmediaV

I also thought this is relevant to set the tone ahead of our conversation, but most importantly, I wanted to shine the light on one of the best tools we have to create awareness and understand how interconnected the industry is to every part of society and the world at large.

Please note that we had a couple of technical challenges that were all resolved during the first few minutes, but I wanted to make sure you had access to this valuable content. Enjoy ! 

Highlights:

• “If we can create a much healthier relationship with our wealth, and the purpose of our wealth, then actually we should be able to fix, repair, increase resilience, and ultimately regenerate the relationships with each other and with nature.” Amy Clarke
• 50th anniversary of Milton Friedman's seminal essay that was penned and then printed in the New York Times Magazine
• “there is a real sense that the values and belief systems upon which we have built this global finance system aren't right, they're not fit, they're not robust.”
• There is the rise of the BCorp movement and the use of BLab tools during the lockdown has risen exponentially.
• “Impact investing is about helping wealth holders reconnect with the purpose of their wealth. The word wealth comes from two old English 13th century old English words, meaning well being, we've lost the well being and wealth along the way. And it's become singularly focused on financial performance.” Amy Clarke
• “I see this as a behavioral inertia challenge. Financial institutions are comprised of individuals, we need to look at how we incentivise these individuals, how we are rewarding them and how we associate value with their actions.” Troy Mortimer
• We can transition not all but a lot of companies through to becoming a force for good.
• “We need a just transition, quickly and effectively where finance, regulation and policy play a role. We need a carrot and a stick.” Troy Mortimer
• How do we move beyond (Only) preaching to the converted?
• The later we leave it, the steeper the transition is going to be - Mark Carney
• The more we pushback regulation deadlines, the more uncertainty it creates. Ultimately, its better to takes the operational learnings in Covid and behaviour change and apply it to compliance and regulation.
• Bernard Looney, CEO of BP, a different style of leadership. Moving away into a more human style of leadership.