SUSTAINABLE INVESTING SOLUTIONS

Individuals & Families

For many years, we have worked with individuals, families and family offices to help them pursue their financial objectives, align their portfolios with their values, and make a positive impact in the world with their capital.



 

 

We aim to infuse sustainable investment principles into every facet of our firm’s thinking, and our approach has evolved over the years to help meet the growing and maturing needs of our clients.

We base our work with clients on several key principles:

  • Sustainable investing can be a path to enhancing returns. Many investors still think that sustainable investing leads to subpar investment returns, but we do not believe that anyone needs to sacrifice returns to reflect their values or make a positive impact with their investments. In fact, our experience suggests that ESG research and sustainable investing approaches can contribute positively to returns over time. 
  • Every client has unique goals and deserves a unique, tailored plan. We work closely with clients in a lengthy discovery process to identify their goals and priorities, which culminates in a sustainable investment policy that clearly lays out the “rules of engagement” for their portfolio strategy.
  • Clients should choose the pace and scale of change in their portfolio. Many investors fear that sustainable investing requires a drastic and immediate portfolio overhaul. But transition can (and often should) happen at a gradual pace.

Capabilities

 
  • Disciplined construction of sustainable portfolios, through an established and documented process for translating client goals and priorities into bespoke asset allocation and manager recommendations.
  • Robust, open architecture platform of sustainable managers, each vetted through due diligence covering their fundamental, sustainable and operational strengths. Our platform covers a wide range of public and private asset classes, with attention to offering manager diversity.
  • ARIS Analytics, our in-house proprietary sustainable reporting system, allows us to provide look-through ESG and impact data on balanced portfolios, down to the individual security level. We leverage this system to help assess legacy portfolios of new clients, recommend new target portfolios, and monitor progress toward each client’s goals over time.
  • Active efforts to help amplify our clients’ voices, through proactive engagement with companies and bond issuers, a thoughtful approach to proxy voting and our own actions and commitments as a firm on key ESG-related topics.
  • Strategic advice regarding broader goals such as aligning impact and philanthropic goals with portfolio strategy; development of appropriate trusts and other legal structures to help achieve legacy or multigenerational objectives, and next-generation education.
  • High-touch client service solutions, covering comprehensive reporting, grant administration, educational support and other needs.
  • Capabilities to provide customized screening to clients (applied independently from our investment process).*

         

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ARIS ANALYTICS:
Our Sustainable Analysis and Reporting Tool

 

To help effectively manage and monitor our sustainable portfolios, we developed a proprietary system called ARIS Analytics, and have refined and enhanced this system extensively over the past two years. ARIS (which is an acronym for Alignment, Risk, Impact and Sustainability) can cross-reference Brown Advisory’s primary ESG research and third-party ESG data sources against the holdings data for hundreds of managers in our approved and recommended list.

Importantly, ARIS is available to all portfolio managers across the firm, and they can use it to quickly generate analysis for any client's portfolio. For more information about ARIS, we encourage you to read through “Inflection Points: 2022 Asset Allocation Perspectives and Outlook Report,” which discusses our philosophy and process for managing sustainable multiasset portfolios.

This sample dashboard provides an ARIS-derived snapshot of a hypothetical portfolio’s sustainable attributes: Allocation between various types of sustainable investments, carbon footprint relative to a broad-market index, and evolution of its carbon footprint and its exposure to what we deem to be ESG-related controversies over time.

This analysis is not intended to be a guarantee of future results. It is not representative of an actual portfolio and is provided for informational purposes only. Asset allocations could change depending on risk tolerance,  investment objective and assets available for investment. The relationship team will customize portfolios to meet the guidelines, requirements and risk tolerance of our clients. The information provided in this is not intended to be and should not be considered to be a recommendation or suggestion to engage in or refrain from a particular investment strategy, including whether or not to buy, sell or hold investments in any asset class mentioned. It should not be assumed that investments in such asset classes have been or will be profitable.

 


Recent Insights

NOW Podcast, S4E1: The Energy Transition

In conjunction with Climate Week, we are launching a three-part NOW podcast series on the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Read more

CIO Perspectives Podcast: Private markets, slowing global growth and are bonds back?

In this episode of CIO Perspectives, Keith Stone, Erika Pagel and Sid Ahl discuss some of the most notable market developments in recent weeks and how they are positioning portfolios accordingly.
Read more

Investing for Purpose: A Governance Perspective on Mission-Aligned Investment Strategy

Whether an investment committee is starting from scratch or already has a mission-aligned investing program well underway, its investment policy statement (IPS) should clearly define long-term strategic goals.
Read more

See More Recent Insights
 

Recent News

Lisa Abraham Featured on the PRI Podcast

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Launch of the Sustainable International Leaders Mutual Fund

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Brown Advisory’s 2021 PRI Assessment Report

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See More Recent News
 

Reporting and Policy Statements

 

Transparency and disclosure are essential drivers of progress in sustainable investing. We seek to hold ourselves to the same standards that we expect of companies, municipalities and bond issuers, in terms of offering clear policies that describe our sustainable investment approach, as well as periodic reports on the impact and sustainable merits of our strategies. In addition to the reports listed here, we offer our clients customized reporting that is tailored to their specific goals and investment guidelines, using our ARIS Analytics system as noted above.

Policies

Reports

  •  
    Proxy Voting Dashboard
    Detailed data on our proxy voting activity, as reported by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS).

 

 

Meet the Team

Dedicated SI Professionals

Our team is made up of committed experts that deliver the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience that our clients require.
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SI Advisory Board

Our team is made up of committed experts that deliver the breadth and depth of knowledge and experience that our clients require.
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*All investments involve risk. The value of the investment and the income from it will vary. There is no guarantee that the initial investment will be returned. ESG considerations that are material will vary by investment style, sector/industry, market trends and client objectives. ESG strategies seek to identify companies that they believe may have desirable ESG outcomes, but investors may differ in their views of what constitutes positive or negative ESG outcomes. As a result, the strategies may invest in companies that do not reflect the beliefs and values of any particular investor. The strategies may also invest in companies that would otherwise be screened out of other ESG oriented funds. Security selection will be impacted by the combined focus on ESG assessments and forecasts of return and risk. ESG strategies intend to invest in companies with measurable ESG outcomes, as determined by Brown Advisory, and seeks to screen out particular companies and industries. Brown Advisory relies on third parties to provide data and screening tools. There is no assurance that this information will be accurate or complete or that it will properly exclude all applicable securities. Investments selected using these tools may perform differently than as forecasted due to the factors incorporated into the screening process, changes from historical trends, and issues in the construction and implementation of the screens (including, but not limited to, software issues and other technological issues). There is no guarantee that Brown Advisory’s use of these tools will result in effective investment decisions.

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Locate the Brown Advisory office closest to you, or reach out to a member of our team.

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