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FRONTIER - The Forum for Investment Leadership
                                   ... changing investment for good

The Forum for Investment Leadership (Frontier) is a global network of pension funds, insurers and asset managers, with over US$2 trillion under management and advice, committed to advancing the practice of sustainable development investment. It is a voluntary initiative, driven by its members, facilitated by the University for Sustainability and supported by academics of the University's global ecosystem. The Forum´s vision is an investment chain in which economic, social and environmental sustainability are delivered as an outcome of the investment process as investors go about generating robust, long-term returns.

Investments - and investors - must change for finance to be fit for purpose

As owners and managers of financial capital, investors have a crucial role in supporting economic activity that enhances rather than damages the environment, and sustains rather than erodes livelihoods and well being. Many investors know this and are practicing what has become known as ‘sustainable development investment’.
    Firstly, we believe that sustainable development investment is primarily smart investment, a means of enhancing risk-adjusted returns by deploying new forward-looking insights into the investment process. This idea recognises the implications of the so-called ‘sustainability megatrends’ (climate change, inequality, resource scarcity, etc.) on the economy, and the value of using AI-augmented data sciences to spot winners and losers in a rapidly changing risk landscape. In many cases, harmful investments are only excluded if they are deemed to be wrong by clients, for example, if they are perceived to pose a threat to beneficiaries’ interests.
    Secondly, sustainable development investment can also be understood as an investment in (and a service to) society: a means of tackling the world’s social and environmental problems through effective deployment of capital. The aim

is to to put beneficiaries’ money to good use rather than invest it in any activity that could be construed as doing harm.
    Finally, the megatrends will, over time, act as a drag on economic prosperity as the costs of basic inputs such as water, energy and land escalate due to scarcity; the prevalence of health and income inequalities will, in turn, breed unrest both within and between nations. Unless the trends are reversed, the whole economy will be weakened, exposed to sustainability-led bubbles and spikes, with smart sustainable development investment powerless to protect returns.
    The Investment Leaders Forum seeks to make a difference via the creation of new practical tools and solutions that benefit from the robustness of research. It generates new thinking which can be put into practice by other investors or used by policymakers and regulators to promote frameworks to make finance fit for purpose and encourage sustainability.
​    Frontier has considerable weight as a group, not merely as a consequence of its total assets under management and advice, but because of its ambition. As such it has the capacity to influence the industry through its own example, and message to others in a convincing way.

Sustainable research or responsible investing should be an integral part of an investor’s day-to-day
business.
Gerhard Wunderkind, Chair of the Investment Leaders Group and Global Head of Responsible Business and Public Affairs, Royal Bank of Canada

Whom we work with

You can’t watch the news literally anywhere without seeing giant fires and storms happening on a regular basis, There’s little doubt that something very profound appears to be going on, and it ought to be addressed.
Mr. Schwarzman CEO of Blackstone Group

SAMPLE RECENT WORK

Measuring Investment Impacts
The Forum provides an overarching framework, for understanding and communicating the impact of investment portfolios. Our goal is to develop a set of impact metrics that translate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into measurable indicators that can be calculable, easily understood, and implementable by investors.

Understanding Consumer Preferences and Behaviours
The Forum is developing a Virtual Investment Model (VIM), which tests investor preferences as to how they trade off financial performance against impact. The experiment is designed to simulate real investment choices and to test pension plan beneficiaries and retail client’s preferences, when facing both sustainability and financial information in standard fund fact sheet format.

Promoting Long-Termism
The Forum has developed a toolkit for investors who wish to design investment mandates that can help shift the investment chain towards responsible, long-term value creation. In addition,  Frontier seeks to develop a checklist allowing asset owners to assess a fund’s long-term orientation as well as enabling asset managers to review their own performance.

Systemic Risk and Resilience
The Forum has developed a model that quantifies the impact of potential climate and energy regulation on company profitability. In addition, the Forum has studied the economic and financial impacts of systemic risk in order to identify opportunities for reducing systemic investment risks through portfolio construction and diversification across different asset classes, regions and portfolios.

"Smart" Money
The Forum has developed and advocated to central banks a Blockchain programmable or "Smart" money to finance green investments at scale, mitigate excessive credit creation or sudden credit contraction, and volatility in financial asset prices and exchange rates, while enabling the targeted distribution of international liquidity to the real economy.

MEMBER BENEFITS

• ​Patron, Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Paul Martin
  
• Being part of an exclusive group of world-leading companies across the investment value chain
• An easy way to exchange knowledge and experiences with other business leaders
  
• Participate in pooling Sustainable Finance R&D efforts
  
• The opportunity to design a project that addresses critical investment challenges and codevelop new research
  
• Associated early benefits gained through participation in forum events
  
• The ability to transfer and apply methods developed, supported by guidance notes and other practical outputs
• Connections to and expertise in finance, policy and climate
  
• Access to global academic networks including thought leadership from the University for Sustainability
• Links to a wider network of over 40 financial institutions (including insurers and banks from our
  
• sustainable finance platforms) and over 30 corporations, as well as the extensive Forum for Investment Leadership network of individuals working across the globe in government, private sector and civil society

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Contact FRONTIER's programme director

FRONTIER Brochure