Italian ICMIF member the Unipol Group has integrated the principles of sustainability into its investment choices, as a fundamental part of the organisation’s commitment to contributing to the achievement of the UN 2030 Agenda objectives.
A recent article in Unipol’s online magazine Changes, examines the question of whether there will be an acceleration towards sustainability in the aftermath of the Coronavirus emergency and will we see coordinated action involving nations and companies? The suggestion of a possible path is contained in a recent Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) bulletin How responsible investors should respond to the Covid-19 Coronavirus crisis which describes the pandemic as an opportunity for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investors and suggests that now is the time for large investments which seek to address the climate crisis as their main focus.
Marisa Parmigiani, Head of Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement, Unipol Group; Director of the Unipolis Foundation and member of the ICMIF Intelligence Committee says that ESG investments are very important for the Unipol Group and as a result an ESG Task Force was established early in 2020.  She says: “We have created an ESG Task Force which brings together the various technical departments responsible for these matters and assesses the ESG risks related to the core activities of the Unipol Group. The focus of the Task Force is on the relationships between ESG risks, reputational risks and emerging risks which derive from the climate crisis or growing socio-economic inequalities,” she says.
“We have identified and analysed our data and activities, discovering important areas of overlap and interconnection, the main ESG risks suffered and generated by our activities. We have had the direct involvement of our Risk Committee as well as our Sustainability Committee. And we then worked to integrate this process into risk analysis models in order to “transfer” it to the Group’s main activities which are most exposed to those risks,” added Parmigiani.
