Stockholm (NordSIP) – After more than fifteen years of working with responsible investments, most recently as Engagement Director at the Council on Ethics of the Swedish National Pension Funds, Tytti Kaasinen has decided it is time to broaden her horizons. Earlier this month, she announced that she would be joining the Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV) as Head of Impact and Research.
Longing for real-world impact
“I have thought a lot about my role in the world and what I would like the future to look like, and, in the process, I’ve realised I want to work with systemic transformation,” she shares with NordSIP. “While I still believe that the investment industry is one of the sectors with the biggest potential to change the course of the world, I need to explore other ways to make a difference, too. I want to get closer to the real economy and accomplish a more direct real-world impact.”
A global alliance of some seventy banks, GABV gathers frontrunner organisations around the shared goal of making the banking system more transparent and supporting positive economic, social, and environmental change. “When I found out about the vacancy at GABV, it felt like a perfect match, and I am super happy that the feeling was mutual,” says Kaasinen.
“The position offers exactly what I was looking for – direct access to ambitious organisations leading by example, supporting sustainability and inclusion in tangible ways, and collectively seeking to change the system by demonstrating the feasibility of holistic sustainability as a business strategy. Besides, having ‘impact’ explicitly in my title is perfectly in line with what I want to do in the world,” she adds.
The allure of sustainable banking
Kaasinen explains that she is excited to work with banks because they are at the front line. “Everyone needs banking services in order to be included, thrive and act sustainably,” she explains. She expects that the diverse membership of GABV will provide fascinating insights into the role of financial institutions in many kinds of contexts and communities. “I look forward to hearing about all the concrete ways of doing values-based banking and its impact and I will try to do my part in increasing the awareness and scale of it. It will also be great to assess related advocacy and research opportunities, and leverage synergies with existing and new partners.”
Throughout her career, Kaasinen has always focused particularly on engagement and active ownership with an international, collaborative, multi-stakeholder, and sustainability-across-the-board angle. “Multi-stakeholder collaboration and being in the middle of things is a key aspect I wanted to keep from the investment stewardship era of my career,” she says. “My new role at GABV definitely ticks that box.”
The materiality of ‘S’
A self-proclaimed “champion of overlooked issues”, Kaasinen shares that she is really concerned about the increasing division and polarisation and the related topics of children’s rights and mental health across age groups. “Such issues are often seen as not being material or portfolio-relevant enough, but I disagree with this assessment,” she says. “Taking a long-term and systemic view, if people are unwell, lack opportunities, or are positioned against one another, that will likely compound many societal problems in the years and decades to come. I can see this in turn affecting the markets through both macroeconomic and consumption patterns. The related risks would not be easy to diversify away,” she reflects. “Besides, people who are unwell, disillusioned or excluded won’t work effectively on environmental challenges either,” she adds.
Kaasinen is happy that the latest issue of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report highlights ‘Societal polarization’ among the top short- and medium-term challenges. “I hope this gives the topic more impetus among the business and investment community.”
As to the challenges ahead, she seems to be taking those in her stride. “There are always challenges when deviating from the mainstream, and so it is natural that transforming established banking practices, let alone globally, is not completely smooth sailing,” she says. “But if something is easy, it probably isn’t really transformative.”
