SHARE, a leading consultant in the area of responsible investing, authors a “Social Risk Primer” to help universities navigate social and human rights risk considerations
VANCOUVER—UBC Investment Management (UBCIM) is the catalyst behind an important new piece of research designed to help investment arms of post-secondary institutions in Canada address a growing priority for university stakeholders: ensuring social and human rights risks are appropriately identified and considered in university investment portfolios.
UBCIM has long had a Responsible Investment Strategy in place, with leadership and influence as two of its core pillars. With that in mind, UBCIM engaged SHARE (the Shareholder Association for Research and Education) to develop an educational primer that outlines how social risks emerge in institutional investment portfolios and how investors can identify and manage them. The primer serves as both an educational resource for university stakeholders and a practical tool to assist the broader Canadian university sector in understanding and addressing these issues.
“The assessment of social and human rights risks within institutional investing is still nascent,” says
UBCIM CEO Dawn Jia. “As a result, it is very difficult to assess these risks within the diversified, multi-asset class portfolios employed by institutional investors like an endowment or pension fund, especially those that utilize external investment managers for security selection. However, given the importance of these issues for all of us — and in particular the university community we serve — we decided to work with SHARE to help move this process forward to not only better educate ourselves, but to assist our peers in Canada as well.”
The primer was specifically commissioned for Canadian universities that manage relatively small capital pools and who implement their portfolios using a “manager of managers” approach — a consideration fundamental to understanding how most post-secondary institutions manage their endowments and pension plans.
Rather than buying individual securities themselves, universities typically hire a basket of investment managers, each responsible for a portion of the portfolio. The primer provides an additional tool universities can use to educate, inform and influence these managers to more effectively consider social and human rights risks within the funds they manage.
A copy of the primer can be found here on the SHARE web site.
For more information, contact: info@ubcim.ca