Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)
parameters are the top three non-financial performance
indicators in today’s business environment. Over the
last couple of years, they have gained significance and
become critical for long term competitive success. Today,
a structured disclosure of performance is an essential
requirement for businesses. The increased attention
around the environment, well-being of employees,
societal concerns and transparency in the business
are central factors while measuring the sustainability
and societal impact of an investment in a company
or business. In line with this, at UTI AMC, we have
proactively initiated concerted efforts in benchmarking
our processes and policies with the global best practices
across the domain of ESG.
We have undertaken a thorough review of policies, processes, disclosure requirements on ESG in a phased manner. In order to bring the required focus to the continuously evolving ESG landscape that impacts our business, we have embarked on the process of setting up a Board level ESG committee. The vision behind setting up this committee is to support the organisation’s commitments towards the environment, health and safety, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, sustainability, and other relevant public policy matters. The committee will provide guidance, leadership and necessary oversight for:
Furthermore, significant progress has been made in the journey to becoming an ESG benchmarked-organisation within the Asset Management segment. We are in the process of putting together the ESG integration framework that is also applicable to our group companies, namely UTI International Ltd., UTI Retirement Solutions Ltd., UTI Venture Funds and UTI Capital Pvt. Ltd. The ESG framework is the first major step towards integrating essential ESG aspects into our business operations. This framework draws from global best practices and standards. It will serve as the guidebook for strengthening existing management systems and cater to ESG disclosure requirements of various stakeholders such as regulatory authorities, shareholders, civil society, industry associations, media/ rating agencies.
Simultaneously, we have also initiated work on developing the materiality assessment for ESG aspects. This exercise will help identify and prioritise organisation-specific ESG considerations. It will use focus group discussions and guidance provided by sector-specific ESG standards such as Global Reporting Initiative’s Financial Services Sector Disclosure and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)1 for Asset Management and Custody Activities. This will be followed by developing the Annual ESG Report for UTI AMC as per Global Reporting Initiative’s Standard ‘In Accordance – Core’. It will serve as the Company’s ESG performance report card along with the improvement plans going forward. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an international independent standards organisation that helps businesses, governments, and other organisations understand and communicate their impacts on climate change, human rights and corruption. It is one of the most widely adopted standards for ESG disclosures. The majority of Fortune 500 companies choose to report as per GRI Standards. Moreover, demonstrating our commitment to work towards global concerns like climate change, we would be reporting on the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions inventory for the organisation in our ESG disclosure, along with plan to mitigate GHG emissions from our business operations.
We are now at
the cusp of our
ESG journey, and
there is a need
for continuous
improvement as
we progress to
keep pace with
the changing ESG
landscape. We will
be considering
getting rated
by leading ESG
rating agencies
to benchmark our
performance within
the peer group
and the industry
at large to identify
further areas of
improvement.
1SASB is now part of Value Reporting Foundation
