When Silver was founded in 2018, we did so with a vision for a highly personalized approach to helping clients with regulatory compliance, ESG and investor due diligence obligations. We recognized that different clients may have different needs and designed our services to accommodate this. We take the time to get to know our clients and make sure we understand the specific challenges they are trying to address.
As we embarked on this relationship-building mission, we were struck by the number of our clients that expressed a desire to better align with the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), a UN-supported network of investors, financial institutions and service providers working to promote responsible investment through the incorporation of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into investment decision-making. Today, approximately half of Silver’s ESG clients are PRI signatories.
The PRI organization is continuously evolving, as regulations and best practices mature world-wide, and now boasts more than 5,000 signatories that represent $121 trillion of assets under management since its establishment in 2006. PRI expects its signatories to enhance their responsible investment practices over time; achieving and maintaining alignment with these expectations cannot be a passive exercise.
Silver’s PRI signatory clients rely on us for our understanding of these changing expectations and our insight into the future trajectory of the organization. Our role to act as an advocate on behalf of our clients in the face of changing reporting requirements and practice enhancements has proven imperative to our ability to best advise on how to manage increase expectations from PRI, balanced with our client’s individual priorities with respect to their ESG programs.
We recognized that the best way to continue our level of engagement with PRI and to provide insight into the organization on an on-going basis was for Silver itself to become a PRI signatory. We signed the Principles in August, and were formally accepted by the organization as of September 2022. We view this as a meaningful next step in our efforts to continuously act as an authentic advisor to clients – as we continue to recommend PRI alignment to clients, we will hold ourselves to the same high standard. But just as important, becoming a PRI signatory gives us a higher degree of access to the inner workings of PRI.
Specifically, we are eager to participate in PRI’s upcoming NY-based consultation meetings and seek to partner with the organization to address our client’s common reporting challenges in advance of the 2023 reporting cycle. We believe it is our responsibility to stay involved in these conversations to best advise and support our clients through the current and future changes that PRI will drive forward. We are excited to play a larger role within the PRI community.
Watch this space for more updates on PRI and please get in touch with the Silver ESG team if interested in discussing a potential project. Learn more about PRI and signatory requirements at www.unpri.org.