Brown Advisory has committed to the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, a growing coalition of 220 investment firms around the world representing more than $57 trillion dollars as of November 1, 2021. Signatories have pledged to support the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner, in line with global efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and to commit a portion of assets over the next year to be managed in line with the attainment of net zero by 2050 or sooner.

We are excited to join a growing host of investment firms that we respect, each of whom is committing to reducing the climate impact of their investment choices over the long term. We are especially happy to join an initiative governed by several investor networks that we view as close allies and friends, including Ceres, CDP and Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). Each of the investor networks supporting NZAM have already earned the respect of investors and businesses around the world, through years of dedicated and effective work to expand the reach of sustainable investing principles in our industry.

 

"Brown Advisory is proud to join the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative to support the alignment of global capital allocation with long-term environmental goals. In our pledge, we remain committed to serving our clients individually so that we can deliver industry-leading investment performance by and through a focus on rigorous fundamental and sustainable research."
Michael Hankin CEO, Brown Advisory
 
 
Our decision is the result of several months of deliberation about how we could offer our best and fullest support to the initiative’s framework. We believe that we already address certain climate risks and opportunities in our sustainable investment strategies as part of our fundamental investment process, and therefore wanted to ensure the NZAM framework supported several different methods for addressing climate risk in portfolios beyond traditional avoidance or divestment approaches, such as engagement, labeled bond investing, climate transition investing and other techniques.

 

Of equal importance to us is the fact that we manage assets for thousands of families, institutions and charities, each with their own viewpoints regarding climate change and sustainable investing in general. As a result, we wanted to ensure that we could make a genuine and authentic commitment to the initiative, while starting with a portion of our assets held by clients for whom we are already managing sustainable mandates. After further consideration, we are confident that our decision to commit will help us better serve all of our clients' interests.

There is much work to be done--by us, and by the entire NZAM signatory community--as we determine exactly how we will fulfill this multidecade pledge. We are in the thick of that work; our ESG research teams are deeply focused on evolving our analytical methods, engaging with companies and bond issuers to encourage forward-thinking climate strategies, and working with teams across our firm to put in place our own tools for tracking emissions data. Despite the daunting task ahead, we feel very comfortable committing to NZAM, because we believe its approach is very much in line with our independent thinking on how we want to tackle climate risk in our portfolios. We believe that NZAM's flexible approach to working with signatories can be a powerful mechanism for steering more and more global investment capital over time to lower-carbon investments.

For more information about the NZAM initiative, please visit https://www.netzeroassetmanagers.org.