Some of the initiatives listed above might sound obvious and routine to the man on the street, but for many in the investment industry these are radical moves and are anything but commonplace. Are there risks from our approach? Some would argue that we are giving up some of our intellectual property by publishing what we own, but I would say that our IP runs rather deeper than the name and a short description of why we own it. Perhaps we give competitors and others ammunition to attack us with if we make mistakes. This is perhaps more difficult. We don’t expect to get every investment decision right, but we should be confident enough to talk about where investments haven’t worked out the way we hoped they would. But certainly this is an area where we expect the playing field will steadi-
ly level over time if industry standards of transparency start to improve in the way we believe they should. In our view the need for greater transparency and open-ness relates to the whole investment industry, and not just within funds that have a focus on sus-
tainable and responsible investments. From experience we are confident that we have stronger relationships with our clients as a result of being open with them, so we do this from a commercial point of view and expect our business to benefit over the longer term.
Editor’ Comment: What’s really great about this article is that it shows asset managers can develop propositions that are completely clientcentric, and can make full use of transparency as a commercial virtue. George’s article makes those points really well, just as his colleague Seb Beloe did at our last Transparency Symposium. A couple of questions come to mind though: Why are so few UK asset managers signed up to EUROSIF’s Transparency Code? And what will the FCA Asset Management Market Study do about their apparent concerns regarding the unusual challenges smaller asset managers face gaining market share?
| May 2016 | Launch Edition | www.transparencytaskforce.org | The Transparency Times
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