The LGBT community and its allies are being asked to share their views on how investment and savings firms should manage their money in a new survey launched today.
In July, ESG Clarity reported LGBT organisations LGBT Great, LGBT Capital, Equality Group and Bisi Alimi Foundation had collaborated to research and produce the report A New Frontier: LGBT+ Lens Investing for the 2020s for release in November 2020.
Today’s survey forms part of the larger report, which will also consider how an LGBT lens can be applied to the investment process.
“For example, an investment firm buying shares in a company could use a tool to determine whether they are acting ethically when it comes to LGBT+ equality,” the group said in a statement today.
When it comes to LGBT diversity and inclusion, evidence shows companies that embrace positive policies and practices improve their corporate performance. Credit Suisse research demonstrated companies with openly LGBT management, companies voted in a recent survey as a leading LGBT company, or companies whose employees are openly members of local LGBT business networks, outperformed global stocks by 3% over six years.
Amundi Asset Management published a report in May to show the outperformance of an investment universe based on the relative contribution of companies to social inequalities, outperformed its index by 119 basis points from February to April 2020.
Commenting on today’s survey launch, Matt Cameron (pictured), global managing director of LGBT Great, said: “The LGBT+ community and its allies care deeply about how and where their money is invested and managed. We want to know how investment decisions are made based on social equality indicators during the screening process and we want to avoid any investment of our capital into companies who do not live up to LGBT+ equality standards”.
To take part in the survey, click here.
