When discussing ESG with her clients, Jessica takes a proactive approach. She says it’s important to understand the client’s personal values and what’s important to them. By doing so, Jessica believes she is better able to frame the ESG conversation with her clients.

“At MGD Wealth, I’m championing strategic change around ESG within the business. That’s because I believe if we’re on the ESG journey, then as a business, we want to gain momentum by aligning ESG with our service offering.”

Jessica admits to primarily leading the conversations about ESG with her clients. She says about one-third of clients have a particular issue with investing, but sometimes that issue isn’t raised until Jessica delves into their values and approach to investing.

“However, I find it’s only one or two key things that people don’t want to be invested in, like animal cruelty. So, I start the process of uncovering their concerns by using a prompting question, such as: ‘Are there any areas you’re passionate about not investing in?’

“By swinging the conversation around by talking about the things clients are not passionate about, this tends to shift the way in which clients think and begins to open the door to conversations about investment opportunities,” she says.  

Jessica’s participation in the Ethical Invest Group’s Accelerator Program — an online program focused on delivering knowledge, skills, resources, and support to advisers who want to provide ethical and responsible investment advice — has helped Jessica hone her skills and knowledge of ESG, which has significantly assisted her in discussions with clients.

She also uses a number of other tools to help with client engagement, like Climate Signals — an online resources hub with information covering earth systems, heat, drought, wildfires, and floods — which provides data on specific areas that are currently being directly or indirectly impacted by climate-related events. 

Another online tool Jessica uses is Fossil Free Funds. This website analyses the fossil fuel exposure and carbon footprint of thousands of managed funds and ETFs, enabling advisers to align their clients’ investments with their values.

“I like to use visual tools and data to prompt an emotive response with my clients,” says Jessica. “And that’s not to change their decision-making, but to remind them about what’s happening in the world and how they can use their money for social, ethical, and environmental good.

“So, the tools that I use are simply to provide context and information for clients, and to see whether it resonates with them.”

However, Jessica concedes that ESG investing can be complicated, depending on how deep clients want to dive with their exclusions. She relies on a range of reports, like Lonsec’s Sustainability Report, which rates different managed funds from a sustainability perspective.

“These reports show what allocation these funds have to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). This allows advisers to have much deeper conversations with their clients in terms of how certain funds measure up against the UN’s 17 SDGs and how they align to their own values.”

Please note the highlighted and underlined lext has url links to the website for the tools names

For advisers embarking upon the ESG and sustainability journey, Jessica’s advice is to be consistent with your messaging when talking to clients.

“If you decide that ESG is an area you’re going to start addressing, then you need to drown out all the noise around you from others who don’t believe in ESG. You need to be consistent with your personal beliefs and values. You also need to be consistent with your terminology when framing ESG and sustainability to your clients,” she says.

“People do want to make an impact with their investing. Whether this is alignment to the UN’s SDGs or to their personal values, I believe the ESG story is very compelling and is becoming increasingly attractive for more investors.” says Jessica