Insight seeks to help our clients achieve their desired outcomes and to reflect their priorities. This lies at the heart of our approach to responsible investment.

We assess and identify, and take responsibility for managing, factors we deem to be financially material (including, but not limited to, sustainability and governance factors) whilst also reflecting client sustainability preferences.

Financially material sustainability risks can be ‘direct’ in that they are identifiable, can be more straightforward to quantify, and typically occur over the nearer term, such as pollution fines or product safety issues. They can also be ‘indirect’ and may have multiple pathways to financial relevance; quantification is more complex as they typically stem from broader issues that impact the whole economy over the long term. Examples are extreme heat and water scarcity.

For clients who wish to apply specific criteria to their mandates to help deliver sustainability outcomes, we have developed sustainable investing strategies to enable them to do so.

“We pride ourselves on our ability to fulfil our clients’ specific needs with tailored portfolios that reflect their preferences, including sustainability goals.

“However, for every client mandate, we believe that it is crucial to have a robust evidence base to support better investment decision-making that helps our clients to achieve their desired outcomes. This is foundational to a responsible approach.”

Raman Srivastava, CEO
Responsible stewardship at Insight

Our latest 2025 report details our responsible investment and stewardship activity.

Q1

Seeking to understand how Insight applies its stewardship approach in practice?

We explain how we look to integrate ESG factors in our research and analysis, including for liability-driven investment (LDI) and select fixed income strategies.

Q2

Looking for evidence of the impact of Insight’s responsible investment approach?

We share our work to address systemic risks, details of our counterparty and thematic engagement programmes, and extensive case studies of our engagements.

Q3

Interested to learn more about 2024 enhancements to our approach?

We set out details of new initiatives and developments which support our stewardship activity.

A committed responsible investor

Insight’s long-established approach to integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in fixed income research and decision-making aims to support the long-term potential of our portfolios.

Whether your goals are purely financial, or you also want to achieve sustainability outcomes, a fixed income portfolio can help achieve both. Watch our video to find out more.

2006

Founding signatory to PRI1

150

Number of ESG-focused engagements in 20252

>3,100

Issuers covered by Insight’s Prime corporate ESG ratings3

6

Responsible Horizons strategies for investors with financial and sustainability goals3

A responsible investment leader
Taking the initiative with Prime

Information on ESG factors and related risks is offered by a wide range of providers but there are significant gaps. We seek to deepen our understanding of such issues through our own analysis, engagement and using our proprietary Prime ESG ratings. For clients with net-zero goals, we also seek to categorise corporate issuers according to their net-zero alignment.

There is variation in ESG data from different providers. For many smaller issuers, particularly emerging market or high-yield companies, the availability of relevant non-financial data lags information from larger issuers.

For these reasons, we developed the Prime corporate ESG ratings, with customised metrics to make the data as pertinent as possible to our analysis.

Insight’s Prime corporate Insight ESG ratings are generated by following a risk-centric approach with high coverage of global benchmarks.

To read more on our ratings and how we use them, please click here.

In 2017, we introduced our Prime climate risk ratings, which now over 18,200 issuers according to how they manage climate change-related risks.

We believe it to be the investment industry’s first comprehensive ranking of how fixed income corporate credit issuers manage their climate change-related risks and opportunities, and how they are positioning themselves for the transition to a low-carbon economy. The index is designed to be used to assess risks and opportunities related to climate change.

Please click here for more details, including:

  • how Insight uses the index
  • the methodology underlying it, and
  • details of key findings.

Beyond considering climate risks as part of their core investment approach, some clients are looking to pursue net-zero targets.

To help these clients invest in line with their net-zero goals, Insight has created ratings to categorise corporate and sovereign issuers according to the extent of their commitment to and alignment with achieving net zero by 2050.

To read more on our net-zero ratings, please click here.

image image

Engaging on the issues that matter

Engaging on the issues that matter

Insight proactively engages on industry and regulatory issues that have implications for our clients and the wider market. To read more about the issues on which Insight has engaged, please click below.

Insight proactively engages on industry and regulatory issues that have implications for our clients and the wider market. To read more about the issues on which Insight has engaged, please click below.

Find out more

Our responsible investment policies

Making a positive impact

You may be seeking a positive impact with your investments. We can work with you to build a portfolio that incorporates such objectives.

In fixed income markets, the majority of impact opportunities are available via use-of-proceeds bonds (also known as impact bonds), such as green bonds, which set out environmental or social projects that are eligible to be financed. It is also possible to pursue a positive impact by investing in conventional bonds of issuers that are generating a majority of revenues from activities that are assessed as sustainability-aligned. Insight seeks to assess impact bonds – such as green bonds – to ensure they meet our requirements for relevant portfolios. In this paper, we set out our assessment framework for such investments.

We can also apply a range of overlays for corporate debt portfolios, such as those highlighted below.

For a full range of definitions for responsible investment terms, including investment strategies, please see our responsible investment glossary.

 

Further reading

Back to top