In its first ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) ranking of Russian banks, rating agency RAEX-Europe has placed RusAg in the top five of ESG-compliant Russian financial institutions.
This ranking is part of RAEX-Europe’s project to collect, systematise and analyse ESG data for companies on the post-Soviet landscape and assess their performance against 200 indicators in the three key fields of Environmental (environmental impact), Social (staff and local communities), and Governance (information disclosure and management).
According to an RAEX-Europe research paper, credit institutions can exert, either directly or not, a fairly significant environmental impact. Direct impact is made by consuming energy resources and paper, by manufacturing plastic cards or creating new jobs in major cities or distant communities, where credit institutions often relocate their back offices. However, of much greater relevance is the indirect impact, achieved through financing the economy and the people.
Experts assessed whether banks had ‘green’ and ‘social’ financing policies in place, how relevant ESG risks were for their credit policies and whether or not banks were carrying ‘green’ and ‘social’ projects on their balance sheets.
‘When on 29 June 2020 RusAg’s subsidiary RSHB Asset Management LLC launched an ESG-based exchange-traded fund, the first in Russia and the first and only to receive a BBB (esg) ESG ranking, it enabled institutional and private clients to start investing responsibly in a portfolio of leading Russian companies’ shares on RSHB - MOEX - RSPP ESG Vector Total Return Index, an index of the Moscow Exchange and the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP). The fund delivered excellent performance in Q4 2020 and scored first in terms of return among exchange-traded funds. The management company intends to develop new collective investment products that comply with the principles of ESG and PRI [Principles for Responsible Investment],’ said Roman Serov, RSHB Asset Management’s General Director.