Green Investment Management Terminology Jargon Buster

Green Investment Management Terminology Jargon Buster

Hannah Duncan

Sustainability marketing & Investor relations

There are tons of green investment terms. Impact investing, ESG investing, responsible investing, active ESG - the list goes on. But what’s the actual difference between these terms? Are they actually effective? How green are they? In this video, Hannah explains each term in depth and ranks each according to how green they are.

There are tons of green investment terms. Impact investing, ESG investing, responsible investing, active ESG - the list goes on. But what’s the actual difference between these terms? Are they actually effective? How green are they? In this video, Hannah explains each term in depth and ranks each according to how green they are.

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Green Investment Management Terminology Jargon Buster

11 mins 10 secs

Key learning objectives:

  • Understand how effective they are at producing green outcomes

  • Identify what each sustainability term means

Overview:

Hannah Duncan explores all the green investment management terminology and orders them into 3 categories - negative screening, positive screening and impact and activism.

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Summary

What is negative screening? 

The key terms in this group are: 

  • Ethical investing
  • Values-based investing
  • Religious investing
  • Shariah investing
  • Responsible investing

Negative screening is akin to if you take a traditional index, such as the S&P 500 or the FTSE100 and remove some big offenders. The idea is to filter or screen out the really bad stuff and keep the rest. Typically the things excluded would be weapons, gambling, pornography, or alcohol. Increasingly, fossil fuel companies and brands which engage in animal cruelty are also getting screened out.

If a company gets more than 15% of its revenue from these forbidden dealings, it’s kicked off the fund, usually called an “acceptance level” or “materiality threshold”. 

What is positive screening? 

The key terms in this group are: 

  • ESG
  • Sustainable investing
  • Active ESG
  • Best-in-class investments 

This is a step further from negative screening, but is a huge group and it’s full of exceptions and controversies - and also where you would find the most greenwashing. 

ESG falls into the green category because it positively seeks out environmental, social and governance qualities, which is a step beyond negative screening. But it is still not perfect.

What are impact and activism? 

The key terms in this group are: 

  • Impact investing
  • Shareholder activism

These are the companies which truly aim to make the world a better place and are looking to change the status quo, usually for environmental or social good. Many people expect all sustainable and ESG investments to be of this quality, they are actually few and far between. 

 

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Hannah Duncan

Hannah Duncan

Hannah is a passionate and experienced copywriter, with a flair for all things finance. Hannah worked as the Senior Content Manager at Invest Click & Invest, before becoming a contributing writer for Hargreaves Landsdown and Fintech Finance where she wrote blogs, white papers and web copy for businesses - as well as articles for magazines and newspapers. Hannah now is the content writer & founder of Hannah Duncan Investment Content.

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