ESG Risks and Opportunities

In this module, you will be introduced to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Factors and the many different pathways by which they impact financial value. You will learn about the importance of assessing stakeholder interest or salience in different ESG factors and how this varies across industries. You will also gain insight into the five pathways of materiality through which ESG factors impact revenues, costs, or productivity. Finally, you will examine the conditions under which stakeholders are expected to activate these pathways, highlighting the strategic and financial importance of stakeholder relations. By the end of this module, you will have learned how to discern which ESG pathways matter for you and your stakeholders, how to navigate the materiality map and the importance of stakeholder relations for shareholder value.

In this module, you will get an overview of the history of ESG Investing and review the past and present ways that investors have attempted to incorporate environmental, social, and governance factors into their strategies. You will also learn about the relationships between social pressure, corporate responses, and financial performance. Next, you will look at portfolio optimization and how to utilize ESG factors to maximize returns. Lastly, you will review various case studies that look at different investment strategies and their outcomes in terms of both ESG and financial performance. By the end of this module, you will understand the history of ESG investing, corporate engagement and responsibility, and the different ways ESG factors can be integrated into investment strategies.

In this module, you will learn about the importance of ESG data and how you can best integrate it into your financial analyses. Next, you will review different providers of data for ESG factors and learn how to assess this data despite the challenges of interpretability and subjectivity. Next, you will survey the tendency towards integrated reporting whereby firms embed ESG data inside their financial reports. Lastly, you will examine ESG data that focuses on the financial impacts on a firm’s stakeholders who may, in turn, create financial benefits or harm for the firm. By the end of this module, you will be better able to utilize ESG data, assess the differences in ESG data provider approaches, and determine how to quantify the environmental, social, and governance factors which impact a firm’s stakeholders.