CFA Sustainable Investing Certificate Prep Course

Asset owners drive ESG integration through investment mandates and allocation strategies, setting guidelines, engaging stakeholders, and leveraging data to promote sustainable, long-term financial and societal impact.

Asset managers drive esg integration by selecting securities and engaging investee companies to improve esg performance, while fund promoters and financial services enable sustainable investing through data and standards.

Explore how environmental factors drive ESG; examine climate change, mitigation, and adaptation, and how policies like the European Green Deal and Tcfd steer sustainable finance toward opportunities and risk management.

Explore mega trends like climate change, technological innovation, and urbanization, and learn how businesses adapt with renewable energy, digital transformation, and smart infrastructure amid regulatory changes to stay competitive.

Integrate environmental factors into financial modeling and ratio analysis, incorporating environmental metrics to align sustainability goals, inform investment decisions, and strengthen risk assessment and long-term value creation.

Explore how climate change creates opportunities in clean technologies and renewable energy. Leverage circular economy practices, ESG criteria, and green financing to boost brand value and long-term growth.

Investors increasingly demand best-in-class social performance, from occupational health and safety to local community impact. Explore gender equality funds and open stakeholder engagement as value drivers.

Explore social environmental megatrends shaping governments, societies and economies, including globalization, automation and AI, inequality, digital disruption, changes in work and education, demographics, urbanization, and individual rights.

Identify the most material social factors by industry and assess exposure. Apply the Sasb framework to guide financial material topics and categorize supply chain impacts on internal and external stakeholders.

Examine how social factors push firms to engage communities and secure free, prior and informed consent on ancestral lands, while addressing conflict minerals, consumer protection, product liability, and sdg-aligned responsibilities.

Identify material social factors by analyzing geography and industry, company exposure through sector, countries, and supplier locations, and regulatory frameworks shaping investors' assessment of social risks and opportunities.

Engage in active dialogue between companies and investors to strengthen board accountability and decision making, and protect minority shareholders through pre-emption rights, disclosure rules, and related party safeguards.

Explore how independent audits provide assurance on financial statements and ESG reports, through sampling and enhanced auditor reports, strengthening governance, risk management, and corporate transparency.

Governance remains the primary ESG factor guiding investment analysts. Board quality, governance structures, and board diversity drive valuation, risk assessment, and ongoing engagement through annual general meetings and votes.

Explore the UK stewardship code and global stewardship standards, including public disclosures, governance, conflict management, and engagement, to deliver tangible outcomes for long-term institutional investing and ESG integration.

Explore how investor engagement ranges from internal governance teams to stewardship providers and proxy voting advisory firms, enabling informed voting and collaborative engagements via PRI.

Explore how voting drives stewardship, linking shareholding to strategic engagement, proxies, and AGM participation. Emphasize escalation, collective engagement, and climate-aligned actions under the Paris Agreement.

Analyze how environmental regulations and ESG opportunities influence listed equity valuations by adjusting cash flows, discount rates, terminal growth, and valuation multiples in DCF.

Explore how fixed income investors integrate ESG factors into credit risk assessment from issuer to portfolio, across sovereign, corporate, and municipal bonds, and the role of ratings and data.

Integrate ESG into strategic asset allocation to manage climate risks and portfolio diversification through MVO, TPA, Da, LDI, and regime switching, with scenario analysis under Paris Agreement paths.

Explore how ESG criteria guide asset manager selection through rigorous due diligence, combining qualitative and quantitative assessments of policy presence, initiative participation, and scoring frameworks for depth in investment strategies.

Quantify ESG risks within portfolio management by attributing performance to region and sector factors. Examine whether ESG signals add alpha independently, given correlations with value, quality, and size.

Investigate ESG screening across listed and private equity, from PRI reporting and sector-neutral long/short strategies to carbon intensity metrics, NLP sentiment, and pre-deal governance-focused evaluations.

Explore how ESG integration mitigates environmental, social, and governance risks in portfolios and can drive alpha, while addressing challenges in quantifying its impact with traditional attribution models.

Explore ESG screening approaches including negative, positive, and norms-based (UN Global Compact), and implement a pri-guided process with objectives, oversight, monitoring, and transparent reporting across listed and unlisted assets.

Thematic investing targets sustainability aligned themes such as clean energy, water, and healthcare through active and passive strategies to diversify portfolios and support the sustainable development goals.

Balance annual reviews with long term principles under the IGN model mandate and Brunel accord by monitoring portfolio turnover, governance, risk, and ESG integration, while probing changes in management practices.

Explore how investment managers measure and report ESG integration, emphasizing outcome-focused disclosures, real-world impacts, benchmarking with ESG data, and transparent stewardship and engagement practices.