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Sustainable investing – ask the expert

Assessing client sustainable investing requirements and researching and recommending solutions can be far from straightforward. To help you gauge what the right approach might be for your firm, Fidelity’s Paul Richards poses a number of your questions to Lee Coates, founder of ESG Accord. Lee sits on the FCA’s Disclosures and Labels Advisory Group and is one of the country’s leading advisers on ethical investing.

How can advisers help clients make an informed choice on sustainability and values-based investment?

Is a sustainability questionnaire necessary when a client wants some of their money invested sustainably?

Should sustainability and values-based questions be part of the risk profiling process?

What resources are available to advisers to improve knowledge and understanding of ESG, sustainability and values-based investing?

Meet our expert

Co-founder, ESG Accord

Lee is a sustainable investing pioneer with more than three decades worth of experience in ethical investing.

In 1989, he launched independent financial advisers Ethical Investors, which dealt exclusively in ethical and responsible investment advice. He retired from the firm in 2020, but during his time there he also launched independent ethical research company Ethical Screening (in 1998). In 2010 he launched Australia’s first animal-friendly Superannuation fund, Cruelty Free Super. The following year he was awarded an OBE for services to ethical business and finance. Lee is also part of the FCA’s Disclosure and Labels Advisory Group (DLAG).