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CFA Sweden Celebrates Fixed Income ESG Warriors

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Stockholm (NordSIP) – Like many other annual traditions, the Swedish CFA Society’s Annual Forecast Dinner has been forced to take a break for a couple of years by the pandemic. On 24 May 2022, the financial analysts were finally able to gather again. As customary at the dinner, the Society officially announced the CFA Sweden ESG Award, which recognises an individual, organisation or group that has raised awareness of the importance of ESG considerations in the investment process. For 2021, the honour was awarded to the Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute (AFII) and its founder Ulf Erlandsson.

For anyone who has been following AFII’s insightful and impactful research in sustainable fixed income, the recognition will hardly come as a surprise. Since its launch in July 2020, the non-profit think tank and research institute has taken a refreshingly pragmatic market-based approach to the role fixed income plays in affecting positive climate impact. Firmly convinced that fixed income can be extremely powerful when you direct it for a sustainable purpose, the institute’s experts have made it their mission to bring transparency to and provide in-depth analysis of the market.

“Despite the enormous increase in focus on ESG-issues within the financial industry for the past few years, fixed income has remained slightly in the shadows,” comments John Howchin, Co-Chair of CFA Society Sweden’s ESG Committee, upon announcing the award winners. “The Anthropocene Fixed Income Insitute and Ulf Erlandsson have done a tremendous job of both shining a light on inconsistencies of fixed income market players and widening the debate on sustainable bonds. This reinforces the public trend of “follow the money” into banks, trading desks and their responsibilities and will be very important in the years to come when all commitments to Net Zero will be scrutinised,” he adds.

“The Anthropocene Fixed Income institute and I, personally, are honoured by this award and very grateful to the CFA Institute Sweden for highlighting, through this award, the absolutely crucial climate change mitigation capital reallocations that need to happen in fixed income, comments Erlandsson.

Upon launching AFII, Erlandsson vowed that the research published by the institute would be a hybrid between the industry’s practical but sometimes overly simplistic approaches and academia’s intellectually rigorous but often market-detached approach. “The industry understands the data but lacks quantitative tools, and academia knows the tools but does not understand the data. Blending the two can get you very interesting conclusions,” he explained at the time.

Two years later, the recognition by an acclaimed body like Sweden’s CFA society provides further proof that AFII has indeed delivered on its promises.

Image courtesy of CFA Sweden Institute

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