Tailored advice on sustainable investing topics

According to the UBS Investor Sentiment survey, published in July 2021, business owners see an array of potential benefits in sustainability over the next three years. Of those surveyed, 61% believe sustainability could generate more revenue, 57% believe it could improve client relationships and 55% believe it could do the same for employee relationships.

In July, UBS announced its next step in providing personalized, tailored sustainable investing advice for its wealth management clients. With the new offering, clients can tailor the advice they receive along six sustainable investing topics: Climate change, Water, Pollution and waste, People, Products and services, and Governance. These have been identified by UBS Global Wealth Management’s Chief Investment Office as being those that are most important to drive businesses and industries to a sustainable future.

For the second time in a row, UBS Group ranked 1st out of 78 firms in the 2021 Global Association of Risk Professionals Climate Risk Survey. This reflects UBS’s well-established climate governance, strategy, risk management and disclosure. UBS is making good progress in developing its climate action plan, which will be communicated in the firm’s climate reporting in March 2022.

UBS has also become a member of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (the TNFD). The TNFD brings together experts in biodiversity, data, metrics, standards and disclosure frameworks into a single collaborative endeavor that aims to create a practical framework for nature-related risks. Its goal is to accelerate the shift in global financial flows from nature-negative to nature-positive outcomes.

Investing with impact

In September, UBS launched the India chapter of its independent philanthropic arm, UBS Optimus Foundation. For more than two decades, UBS Optimus Foundation has been at the forefront of impactful philanthropy, delivering scalable solutions for social and environmental issues.

The new chapter will give philanthropists and UBS clients a direct channel to participate in some of the ground-breaking work achieved by UBS Optimus Foundation in India and elsewhere. It also deepens UBS’s commitment to the region and to clients seeking to alleviate social inequality and its root causes. These programs have benefited four million children and helped train nearly 240,000 professionals since 2015.

To harness the power of collective philanthropy, in October, UBS Collectives was announced. This innovative social-impact initiative connects UBS’s philanthropic clients, bringing together their expertise and mobilizing their capital to address the issues that matter most to them in the areas of child protection, climate change, health and education.

UBS Global Wealth Management clients have also invested USD 650m in MPM Capital’s Oncology Impact Fund 2 (OIF 2), an impact investing initiative that invests in private and public companies developing innovative treatments for cancer. This represents more than 75% of the total USD 850m raised for the fund. The total sum raised makes OIF 2 the largest dedicated impact investment fund in biotech history.

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