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  • We work to understand how institutions with considerable resources (both financial and reputational) can maximise their ability to address social and environmental systemic risks. Our activities include collaborating with asset owners; engaging directly with banks and fund managers; and scoping a corporate bond index that contributes to preventing fossil fuel expansion.

  • Our research programme centres on universal ownership theory, which is a reframing of responsible investment that broadens the concept of fiduciary duty, mandating investors to look beyond stock-picking strategies in order to work collectively as ‘system stewards’ to address the systemic issues that their portfolios help to create: interconnected global risks such as climate change, inequality, and biodiversity loss. 

    We undertake research and practical collaborative projects alongside major global asset owners, a group that is uniquely positioned to help the investment chain to become more accountable and to encourage it to operate in the long-term public interest. Alongside this, we engage with regulators and standard-setters to bring baseline expectations in line with the academic evidence. We put our own research into the public domain through, for instance, producing briefings that are used widely by fellow asset owners and civil society organisations.

     

    Find out more about our work on the Cambridge Universal Ownership Initiative

    Find out more about our work on the 1.5°C-aligned corporate bond index

     

  • Our approach

    Our approach is underpinned by several core principles:

    • We work on interventions that are evidence-based
    • We focus solely on filling gaps in knowledge and practice and amplifying solutions that already exist
    • Our approach is therefore to undertake action-focused social science research…
    • …through which we leverage trusted relationships to drive brave market and policy interventions by asset owner organisations and through the investment chain to banks, fund managers, and investment consultants
    • We know systemic risks need to be addressed via collective action, so we seek to create solutions that are sufficient to address the scale of the risk, not just solutions that encourage best-in-class incrementalist thinking among financial actors
    • We utilise interdisciplinary insights
    • We are strictly not-for-profit