Understanding clients’ hopes and fears and the goals they want to achieve is what advisers do really well.

Having the opportunity to discuss their values on wider environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues as part of the advice process also helps advisers to develop a deeper client bond.

Most clients want to make a difference where they can, and by using this insight, advisers can tailor their investment solutions to meet individual sustainability preferences.

Platform providers have a vital role to play to support advisers here, especially as recent research we carried out highlights how many advisers find it challenging to identify suitable ESG-aligned options for clients and report on their performance.

Advisers need the ability to identify and record their client’s individual ESG preferences and be able to show clients how their investment portfolio aligns with these.

That’s why, as part of their due diligence, firms should look to partner with a platform that allows them to easily access information that can help tailor investments to client preferences.

Strengthening our offering to advisers with Wrap’s new ESG Hub

As a platform provider, we want to support advisers to deliver more personalised advice and tailor solutions to meet client’s ESG preferences.

So, we’re pleased to introduce the ESG Hub on Wrap. The tool, developed with advisers, is fully integrated on Wrap and allows advisers to strengthen the sustainable investment support they can offer clients.

The ESG Hub allows advisers to select from several ESG themes and capture clients’ sustainability preferences. It’s then easy to save and edit these at any time. It’s powered by latest independent ESG data which can quickly evaluate clients’ preferences against their portfolios.

This invaluable data can also be used to easily generate an ESG Report from the Hub, with a full break down of the client’s investments and their impact to support more rewarding conversations. The reports can be downloaded straight from the platform and are automatically added to the client’s document store.

Helping to meet advisers’ compliance needs

Not only does our ESG Hub and ESG Report help to unlock more efficiencies within adviser firms and support conversations, with the FCA recently rolling out its Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR), the tools can support advisers with these requirements too.

The regulator has introduced SDR to help improve the transparency of sustainable investment products and reduce greenwashing. The rules require distributors of sustainable funds to ensure that clients have access to information on a fund’s credentials.

Using our ESG Hub, advisers can easily identify the funds which have sustainability labels applied by fund managers and access the related client-facing sustainability disclosure documents. This support means advisers can quickly see if clients are investing in funds that require additional SDR information and download the relevant disclosure documents to share with them.

Supporting advisers and clients with what matters most

While SDR may be a prompt, the FCA rules are helping to provide more transparency for clients who want to understand more about the ESG part of their investments and the different types of responsible investing available.

Client interest in sustainable and responsible investing is only likely to increase, and it’s this demand that will continue to drive the need for simple, easy-to-understand information about their investments and how they’re performing so they can see the impact of their portfolio.

Wrap’s ESG Hub and the Report are helping to enhance advisers’ platform experience so they can optimise the service they offer clients to meet their needs, especially if firms are looking to expand their ESG investment capabilities.

For our part, we’ll continue to uncover ways our platform innovation can deliver improvements that advisers tell us matter most to their clients and their business.

To access the ESG Hub, log into Wrap in the usual way and select the ESG tab on the Client Summary page or via the main Reporting pages.

For more information, go to our dedicated ESG Hub page.

The value of investments can go down as well as up and your clients could get back less than they paid in.

The views expressed in this blog should not be regarded as financial advice.