Editor's Thoughts.

Today we drop the latest episode of The Art of Manager Fusion, sponsored by Alexforbes Investments. ESG investing is very topical right now, especially in light of the PRI/Krutham Responsible Investment in South Africa report that was released earlier this week.

Now I don’t know about you, but I am on our company’s retirement fund management committee, and I find these conversations and research pieces useful to inform my thinking about our employees’ retirement (and other) outcomes. Where I’m becoming frustrated is that having attended a number of webinars and industry events over the past year, very few conversations include ESG considerations – unless it’s the main topic. What do I mean by that? If we’re talking retirement funds, medical benefits, financial planning, investment performance, whatever – why is sustainability or social impact not a natural part of the conversation? Why do I have to ask specifically on this – and then, most often, my questions are answered with a later email of literally tons of research and reports, no cogent response of “Nathalie, your pension fund built x number of schools, or hospitals, or dams, or roads”.

Are my expectations unreasonable? (Please feel free to email me on this)

In the news feed today, Shameer Chothia (Momentum) surfaces the brewing conversation on tax free pensions, and offers his thoughts on where perhaps expectations also may be unreasonable.

What I can say without any doubt, financial education is a key to unlocking all of this. How people save, accumulate, invest and spend their money, matters. But what’s the point if they don’t understand the tax, options and consequences? And to help them do that, all players in the value chain need to upskill on the latest conversations. Quickly.

Start by registering for next week's webinar: The Great Green Hoax, 9am on the 12th, here.

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