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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.

Is including a question about sustainable preferences in a risk tolerance questionnaire sufficient or is a conversation needed with the client?

How can advisers help clients to articulate their sustainable investment preferences?

What resources are available that can help advisers boost their knowledge on sustainable investment?

Sustainable preferences can differ depending on whether a questionnaire is completed in a meeting or by the client themselves – what’s the solution to this issue?

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).