Responsible Investing in Asia 2020
At the Cusp of Change
Shephard Innovation. Advance Sustainability.
- Learn about the implications for managers as asset owners increasingly focus on environmental issues and key regulators aspire to become green financing hubs
- Understand the key drivers behind environmental, social, and governance (ESG) product launches, distributors’ views on product onboarding, and ideas for tapping product opportunities in markets that lack ESG expertise
- Examine ESG investing’s role in performance and risk mitigation, and highlight the key challenges in assessing the performance of ESG strategies
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Manni Huang
Associate Director, Account Management, Asia
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Summary
Evaluate the uptake of responsible investment in Asia among both retail and institutional segments and understand potential industry drivers that could take ESG investing upstream. This report showcases initiatives and approaches taken by managers, distributors, and asset owners in key markets that embrace ESG investing, and explores the challenges faced by the industry in implementing ESG and how these may be overcome.
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A Note from the Authors
Enhanced ESG Reporting is Expected

Leena Dagade
Associate Director
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Leena Dagade
Associate Director
Based in Cerulli's Singapore office, Leena is responsible for retail research in the Asian asset management industry. She is the lead analyst for the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) research practice in Asia and contributes to Asian institutional reports, Cerulli Edge publications, and consulting projects.
Prior to joining Cerulli, she was a deputy editor for an online financial publishing firm, covering the asset and wealth management industry in Asia. Previously, she worked with a real-time financial news and market data firm and an asset management company.
Full biography here.

Kean Yung Siau
Analyst
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Kean Yung Siau
Analyst
Kean Yung specializes in retail asset management and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing in Cerulli’s Asia-Pacific research practice. He is a lead analyst for the China market, providing quantitative support for the annual report as well as The Cerulli Edge—China Edition. He also provides support to other Asian reports and The Cerulli Edge edition covering the Asia-Pacific region.
Prior to joining Cerulli Associates, Kean Yung was a Business Risk Specialist at UBS Wealth Management. His role was to ensure that front- line staff in Hong Kong and Singapore complied with regulators and internal requirements regarding investment suitability criteria when dealing with high-net-worth (HNW) clients.
Full biography here.
ESG reporting requirements are evolving. While one-third of asset owners surveyed said they currently require portfolio-level exposure to other financially material ESG risks, this percentage jumps to more than double (69%) over the next two years. Similarly, asset owners’ expectations of portfolio-level exposure to climate risks are increasing, as indicated by 71% of the respondents who require asset managers to report on this aspect over the next 24 months, compared to 31% currently.
While ESG is still not mandatory in gaining institutional mandates, its role in the due diligence process is expected to increase in prominence. As ESG investing progresses and asset owners’ expectations of managers on ESG reporting requirements increase, managers will have to demonstrate their capabilities by showing evidence of ESG integration, examples of their actions on specific ESG issues, impact on investments, and the outcomes derived from ESG investments. Learn more about key ESG developments across Asia with our latest report: Responsible Investing in Asia 2020: At the Cusp of Change.
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