Maria Lettini is the new CEO of US SIF — the Sustainable Investment Forum. US SIF is a leading voice advancing sustainable investing across all asset classes. The forum says its mission is to rapidly shift investment practices toward sustainability, focusing on long-term investment and the generation of positive social and environmental impacts.
Its members represent $5 trillion in assets under management or advisement and include investment management and advisory firms, mutual fund companies, asset owners, data and research firms, financial planners and advisors, broker-dealers, banks, credit unions, community development financial institutions and nonprofit associations.
“What makes US SIF unique … is that we have a core group of financial advisers and many of the investors who initially started this sector in this movement,” Lettini said. “So we want to definitely focus in on them, make sure we are delivering a value proposition around education, around highlighting the good work they’re doing to continue to move forward in this space.”
Here is more of my recent conversation with Lettini from “The Impact” on FinTech TV.
Jeff Gitterman: What brought you to take on this challenge, especially in the current times that we’re in as you took over.
Maria Lettini: I’ve been working in the sustainability space now since 2010. Previously, my career started out in finance and capital markets. I always had a real interest in sustainability. I started with the Principles for Responsible Investment to help grow that network of investors who are really trying to engage on responsible sustainable issues around environment, social, and corporate governance criteria. I moved on to work at the Fair Initiative, which focuses on food system risks and opportunities, again with institutional investors.
And one of the trends that I saw coming out of both of those organizations. and trying to sort of grow this understanding and raise awareness about sustainability factors, is that other markets around the world were really moving and embracing sustainability. And the laggard was always the U.S. to some extent. Now, you helped grow this very foundational group of sustainable investors here in the U.S. and that in part is part of the reason why we’re even here talking about it today.
JG: So there’s a lot of things you can tackle at US SIF. How does US SIF focus in on what the court mandates are that they’re going to kind of take on as their challenge or your challenge really as the leader?
ML: Well, we’ve been doing some fantastic things over the past 40 years almost. One of our key areas is policy. So obviously we want to showcase what we’re doing behind the scenes and also working with investors. And we have a growing team that we are looking to ensure that we’re ahead of what’s happening on the policy side. And we’re also behind the scenes educating policymakers on what is and is not sustainable investing.
Many of the people in the capital markets are familiar with SIF because we produce every two years the Sustainable Investing Trends Report. So when I’m looking into 2024 that it’s again a trends year as we like to call it. So we’ll be producing again another trends report. And also next year we’re having our flagship annual conference, which will be in Chicago in June.
See the full interview on FinTech TV.
JG: PRI, CFI Institute, GSIA, they all released a definition to responsible investment approaches, which finally clarifies and tries to harmonize existing terms and definitions. How does this work benefit the industry?
ML: I think this is frankly a long time coming, and it makes sense when you think about different global jurisdictions. Local jurisdictions describe certain investment practices in a slightly different way, all similar but different. And there’s different words and different vocabulary that each one of those local markets uses. So this was really important, and it’s particularly important in a time when communications matter and words do matter, and sometimes words can be taken out of context for sure.
It also makes it more difficult for newcomers to this industry. It makes it more difficult for pensioners, individual investors who want to understand and do more around sustainable investing when we have a whole bucket load of acronyms that we’re throwing around quite frequently.
JG: We’ve come off a year of real anti-ESG programming coming out of the Republican states attorney general’s offices. Thankfully, a lot of that hasn’t really gained much steam, which has been amazing. But I’m curious, when you look into 2024, it’s a trend year, you’re going to be covering trends in the marketplace, what do you see with your crystal ball that we can expect coming in 2024, and what do you make of the, at least for now, pre-election year, the dying down of some of this anti-ESG rhetoric?
ML: Look, I think lucky for us, perhaps this hasn’t taken off as a big sort of media focus. I think it started with a little bit of, ‘Ooh, maybe we can get on a bandwagon here.’ And it seemed to have really fallen flat. So our hope is that we’re not going to see a big uptick in anti-ESG movement. Active managers aren’t going to back away. And I think as we all understand, environment and social issues cover a great span that the constituencies of many of our congressmen are interested in, and many are happening in their own backyard.
And I think when we think about what the risks and opportunities are, I think everyone can agree that not being able to insure your home is an important thing to take into consideration and certainly is a financial material risk. Not having clean water to drink is an important part of how we should be managing our portfolios and access to water, high water risk areas, what’s happening with different high frequency now extreme weather events. And so all of that needs to be factored into our investment portfolios.
And I think more and more the broader community is understanding that we would be actually worse off if we weren’t considering those issues in our investment process. So I see it as everybody kind of coming together in a way, and maybe you’re seeing the community be a little less externally sort of forthcoming with what they’re doing, but certainly it’s not changing what’s happening at their desks at home.
JG: What do you see as the future? And what should advisers be focused on in this space, or how can they help support US SIF in the work that you guys are doing?
ML: I would say I am still optimistic this year, regardless of what we’re moving into in terms of an election year. In the absence of progressive policy that helps move forward sustainability, it’s been the investors and even the corporate sectors and industry who’ve continued to drive capital and assets and investment into the transition that we need. Without it, we’re not going to have a planet that we can live on, and we’re not going to be able to transition sectors equitably. And I think those are really important and affect people on the ground.
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