Sustainable Festival: Schroders' ESG head warns against third party sustainability ratings

Andy Howard: companies risk ‘chasing own tail’ to appease agencies

Andy Howard, global head of sustainable investment and ESG at Schroders, has warned against the usefulness of third-party sustainability ratings, arguing that using these in isolation can be a “fools’ errand”.

Speaking at the inaugural Sustainable Investment Festival, Howard said he and his team did use third party scores but only as one part of their in-house analysis process. The reason for this are the significant discrepancies in ratings between the likes of Sustainalytics and MSCI. Sustainable Festival highlights: Ninety One's Deirdre Cooper and Matt Evans on their key takeaways "Life would have been a lot easier if we could boil all of this down to off-the-shelf measures, of which there are many that exist across the market," said Howard. "But there is not much relationship between...