Listen: Benjamin Franklin famously called on American business leaders more than two centuries ago to "Do well by doing good." To him, that meant creating companies that were not just about the bottom line, but also that helped foster happier and healthier communities. Now, as 2021 approaches and the world recovers from the greatest crisis of our lifetimes, sustainable investing is a bigger discussion than ever. What does it mean, and how does it not only help the environment and societies but also build your bottom line? That's the topic of the latest episode of Living Beyond Borders.
Moderator Caitlin Dean is joined by Harlin Singh, Head of Sustainable Investing at Citi Private Bank; Elree Winnett Seelig, the Head of ESG for Markets and Security Services at Citi; Rohitesh Dhawan, Director of Global Energy and Natural Resources at Eurasia Group; and Gerry Butts, Eurasia Group's Vice Chairman.
Elree Winnett Seelig
Head, ESG, Markets & Securities Services, Citi
Harlin Singh
Head of Sustainable Investing, Citi Private Bank
Gerald Butts
Vice Chairman, Eurasia Group
Rohitesh Dhawan
Managing Director, Energy, Climate & Resources, Eurasia Group
Caitlin Dean
Practice Head, Financial & Professional Services, Eurasia Group
Transcript: Season 1, Episode 9: Can sustainable investing save our planet?
Caitlin Dean:Welcome to Living Beyond Borders, the podcast from Citi Private Bank and GZERO Media that examines the risks and opportunities in our rapidly changing world. From global politics to economics and what it all means for you. I'm Caitlin Dean, Head of the Financial and Professional Services Practice at Eurasia Group.
Today, we're talking about sustainability, which has a long history in the United States. Benjamin Franklin, in fact, famously called on American enterprises in his day to quote, "Do well by doing good." To him, that meant creating businesses and institutions that were not just about profit and getting ahead, but also played a greater role in society and keeping people happy and healthy and strengthening communities.
That idea of doing well by doing good has continued to be in the DNA of American companies, but it's also been twisted or forgotten quite a bit throughout our history. Now, as we near 2021, running businesses sustainably, whether from an environmental or social perspective is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the investing world.
So how big of a trend is it and what does it mean for you? Joining me today are four experts who look at sustainability, not just here in the US but around the world.
First, I'm joined by Harlin Singh, Head of Sustainable Investing at Citi Private Bank. We also have Elree Winnett Seelig joining us. She's the Head of ESG for Markets and Security Services at Citi. From Eurasia Group, we have Rohitesh Dhawan, Director of Global Energy and Natural Resources, and Gerry Butts, Eurasia Group's Vice Chairman. Thanks so much to all of you for being here.
Harlin Singh: Hi, Caitlin. Thanks for having me.
Elree Winnett Seelig:Hi, Caitlin. Very nice to be here. Thank you.
Rohitesh Dhawan:Hey Caitlin. It's great to be here.
Gerry Butts:It's terrific to be here, Caitlin. Thanks for having me.
Caitlin Dean:So let's get some basics out of the way. I think a lot of people still think of sustainability as being only about green business for example. So Harlin, how do you think about it as it pertains to corporations and investors?
Harlin Singh:You kind of bring up a very good point. It's certainly true that a lot of people think of sustainability as being only about the environment and there are really good reasons for it. One, climate change is one of the most significant risks facing the global economy. The impact of pollution, biodiversity loss, and extreme weather impacts everything from people's livelihoods to housing. Secondly, from a regulatory standpoint, green initiatives have been the focus for several years, both incentives and disincentives. Things like credits for purchasing solar and electric vehicles to fines associated with oil spills and the like. And third, it's historically been more tangible in the sense that it's easier to see new green technologies and to measure things like carbon emissions. And the social and governance pieces are sometimes just more difficult to pinpoint or define. That said, I think it's still a very broad concept for investors to define, as there's been such an alphabet soup of terminology associated with the topic and it leaves many people confused.
Harlin Singh:So for example, within the overarching umbrella of sustainability, we find socially responsible investing. So the avoidance of traditional sin stocks or sectors and companies that don't align with a specific set of values, ESG integration, or using environmental, social and governance data to inform either best in class companies or companies with strong momentum in these areas. And impact investing, that's looking to achieve a clear and measurable double bottom line. So increasingly investors are looking for thematic investments, something that they can really kind of put their arms around, whether it's investing in wind or solar or affordable housing, gender lens strategies also coming up a lot more these days.
And then when it comes to corporations, there's also some confusion, or rather irregularity when it comes to reporting. So for some companies, the focus on the environment makes complete sense if they're resource intensive, but for others, the importance of collecting and reporting on social issues is much more material. So as we see the landscape evolve, I think organizations such as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board or SASB will play a significant role in helping companies identify what it means to be sustainable and then measuring against those issues.
Caitlin Dean: SoElree, how has this idea that Harlin mentioned that the double bottom line or the triple bottom line, how has it been changing the business world?
Elree Winnett Seelig:So I think we've seen it for the last, let's say, I don't know, three years, and it's certainly been accelerated by the pandemic, is really a new business imperative and it's about purpose. Importantly, the consideration of ESG and the desire to deploy capital to affect change is increasingly integrated into the DNA of the companies of the investors of the asset managers. Sustainability is becoming core to the business strategy. So when we talk about double bottom line or dual return, what we really mean is a financial return as well as a societal good. And this interest in dual return has really accelerated the sustainability initiatives for corporates and the investment products that are available to investors. To be fair, in terms of capital deployment, we're still at very early stages in this and this next generation of ESG or socially responsible investing. ESG 1.0 or phase one was really very much focused on ESG risks, so things like climate change.
Elree Winnett Seelig:And the strategies that were used were pretty simple like values alignment using exclusionary screens to exclude gambling and tobacco, this controversial activities. And a lot of it quite frankly, was about headlines management. Having those big announcements, but investors and asset managers have become increasingly sophisticated. And we also have seen through the pandemic is that sustainability can be a core driver of value. So dual return strategies and investment products have emerged from this increasing levels of sophistication by the asset managers, as well as interest by the consumers and investors who want to align their purchases and investments with their values. At the same time, we have regulators who are recognizing the systemic risk that's embedded in the financial system. And to be completely fair, we have a lot of corporates who independent of all of those other drivers, are really embracing the concept of stakeholder returns rather than shareholder returns.
Caitlin Dean:And Ro, how have you seen sustainable investing and sustainable companies become a bigger and bigger trend and what's behind that cultural push?
Rohitesh Dhawan:I find it quite extraordinary that although we've been talking a lot more about sustainable financing and sustainable companies of late, frankly the concepts hasits roots well before that. I would argue that responsible investing is as old as investing itself. 18th century Quakers and Methodists laid out very clear guidelines to followers over the types of companies in which they should invest as did other religious groups. And in modern times, what we've found is that the concept's been more formalized as the mutual fund industry grew from the 1960s onwards and that was linked primarily to the movement for civil rights. And then over the next 20 or 30 years, we had some really iconic incidents that crystallized the sustainable investing movement. I would highlight things like the Exxon Valdez oil disaster, or actually the tragic system of apartheid in my home country, South Africa.
And post financial crisis, the concerns around fairness in society and questions about inequality really gave additional momentum to sustainable investing, until of course, a realization about the climate crisis really accelerated the trend. So today the value of global assets that apply ESG is estimated to be around $40 trillion and that's about a third or more of global assets under management. If it sounds like a lot, it is. In the last four years, the assets under management with an ESG principle have doubled, and over the last eight years, they've grown by 300%. So we have seen extraordinary growth in the whole area of sustainable finance.
And to your second point, Caitlin, about what's behind this rise of sustainability thinking amongst corporations. Once again, I think we can actually look back in history to understand the roots of it. And there are several instances where companies that are iconic today find themselves having grown from a philosophy of, at least some concern for workers rights in the case of many that were born out of the industrial revolution or indeed off environmental concerns as far back as the early 1900s. Today, every single company really, certainly large companies, I'd argue even mid-sized companies have a position on sustainability.
Caitlin Dean: And Gerry, this is a trend that at least in the US has come really morefrom popular pressure and from companies rather than any sort of requirement by governments. Is it surprising that we're seeing a lag on the policy side?
Gerry Butts:I don't think it is Caitlin. I think the reason economic actors and large pools of capital have driven this conversation forward at an increasing velocity compared to the policy discussion, and I've been in and around these policy discussions for the better part of 20 years now, is the planning cycle that capital pools have to absorb risk over a timeframe that political actors don't made issue for long-term planning problems. That it's not an accident that the first really significant economic actors to start absorbing climate as a material risk where large insurers and reinsurers.
What is happening now is the facts on the ground are changing quite rapidly for your American listeners. And we're halfway through the Greek alphabet for hurricanes. We've lived through a wildfire season where we've seen the fifth largest economy, California, if it were a country, suffering unprecedented wildfires. And this is largely coming to fruition of the science-based projections that have been made about climate change. I think that go back to first year economics and I remember a professor saying to me that, "If something can't go on forever, that means it's going to end." And we're feeling the effects of climate change in our daily lives now to the extent that it's become a salient political issue in local and national and international politics. And I think one of the most optimistic aspects of where we find ourselves in the development of the issue is that smart money has been ahead of the policy game.
Caitlin Dean: So Elree, what are some examples of what we're specifically seeing corporations do?
Elree Winnett Seelig: Really what they're focused on is adapting their business models to align with their sustainability objectives and they're at varying stages of sophistication in terms of that. What they start with is simply by defining what they mean by sustainability and what they want to achieve, and then they're building a strategy around it. For instance, we see a lot more firms and countries announcing net zero targets. Tactically, what it means is that they're assessing their teams, their supply chains, their operations against those objectives, and starting to measure. What we need to do is we need to start quantifying. And I have to say it'sreally hard work just because it's green doesn't mean it's not risky. In many cases, these firms don't have the expertise in a new market or with a new technology.
It also requires investors' support. I really want to reinforce that because investors and asset managers are trying to drive change, but they also have to accept what that change looks like. So when a firm, an oil company announces a net zero target and writes down a large portion of its oil and gas portfolio, realistically it's not going to give returns in the double digits anymore. It's going to give returns in the single digits. It's going to become an energy company and it's going to be a process and I think investors need to be willing to support that change. NGOs and civil society as well, need to understand that it takes time to transition a business model and that we really need these larger firms to use their bandwidth, to use their sort of broad portfolio of cash flows to use their scale around the world to be able to deliver these sustainable solutions.
Caitlin Dean:And Ro, why is this so important for companies? Is it just about the business case?
Rohitesh Dhawan: Caitlin, Gerry has a wonderful saying that I'm going to use here. And he says, "The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing." And in this case, the main thing is the business case, which is that by being sustainable, companies can offer deliver better risk adjusted returns than if they chose parts that were clearly unsustainable in the future. And soI think it is both absolutely correct and indeed desirable for anybody who cares about progress and sustainability, that the business case for sustainability remains front and center of why and how companies act. But it's by no means the only reason why companies are taking the steps that we're seeing. There are several other areas where companies are responding to pressures and wanting to be more sustainable.
Take employees to begin with, just this year and into the past couple of years, we've seen several groups of employees and individual companies speak out that their firms weren't doing enough. And we've also heard of companies that five years ago would have been the top of any list for graduates to work at, finding it hard to attract people to work there. And the shorthand for why they're finding it hard is because people are saying, "Well, when I'm a grandmother or grandfather, am I going to be proud about saying to my grandchildren, this is what I spent my career doing?" And if they don't have a strong story to tell, it's very hard to get people to commit their careers to work for companies like that.
Customers too, of course, there's evidence of them making choices in line with their environmental and sustainability beliefs. You've got companies like Patagonia, for instance, whose brand is tied to sustainability and that's appealing for certainly a group of customers. I don't think we should oversell this either because the fast fashion industry, which is indeed responsible for quite significant environmental impact still exists and still grows, but there are certainly new business models that give customers a better product that's more aligned with their sustainability goals. And finally, I would say NGOs and civil society do certainly influence company actions, that's the whole range of NGO actions. You've got the more extreme and radical end of NGO actions in the form of public demonstrations and in some cases direct action against companies and in other case of softer pressure. So I think it's a combination of the business case, as well as these other actors that companies are responding to.
Caitlin Dean:Now there are, of course, both carrots and sticks in terms of motivations for sustainability. We have political pressure from the public and pressure from investors, but there's also government increasing some regulations. Gerry, we discussed how government can sometimes lag a bit behind the popular forces, but there are also some positive steps coming from government. So where do we stand with those?
Gerry Butts:Well, I think in 2020 Caitlin, we've obviously been and understandably been preoccupied with the COVID-19 pandemic, but when the climate history of 2020 is written, it will have to include some monumental commitments by very significant governments. We now have in particular, the government of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping's speech to the United Nations General Assembly this year is one of the most important policy announcements made in recent memory, committing China to peaking at submissions this decade and achieving net zero by 2060, or the middle of the century. Those are very significant things. And the governments of Japan, Korea, Canada, the European Union, have all made similar announcements.
Gerry Butts: Now you can be cynical and you should be a little bit cynical or skeptical at least about these announcements that a lot of these governments are not going to make their Paris Agreement targets in 2030. Soit's easier to kick the can down the road, but from an investment point of view and sort of political climate point of view, it'spretty clear which way the wind is blowing. And these are long-term efforts that are not going to be turned around easily. So I said earlier that the market can often perceive risk in a more robust way than political actors can, but once political actors do turn their governments around, they act with great force and they make changes that are very difficult to reverse.
Caitlin Dean: And Harlin, what kinds of regulations are having the biggest impact when it comes to sustainable investing?
Harlin Singh: Yeah, so there have been many regulatory frameworks set forth over the last year or so. You're up for the vast majority of time has been an early adopter in sustainability, both in terms of investments and in terms of behavior. And they have proposed a set of regulations that are expected to come into effect in 2021. While some of it can be seen is this kicking the can down the road to some extent, I certainly think that there's some regulatory alpha within these regulations. In the sense that there are offering frameworks for greater transparency for both asset managers, as well as from companies. And they should lead to less, what we call green washing or investments that claim they have some green attributes or sustainability attributes, but really don't meet a specific level of rigor.
So I think about where the impact's coming from, the EU, certainly leading the charge and we're starting to see jurisdictions in Asia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, kind of falling in line a bit here. And I think that'll lead the way that the world thinks about it. From our standpoint, we're a global business. And so, when the EU proposes regulations where we need to offer that level of transparency to our clients in the region, we think about this from a global standpoint. So we need to ensure that that level of transparency exists for all of our clients. And so I think that with the EU leading the charge here and creating this pretty strict set of regulations, we will see some of that regulatory alpha play out.
Gerry Butts: If I can just add to that, Caitlin, I love that term regulatory alpha, that should be a thing for sure. I think one of the most specific examples of the dynamic that we're talking about, where you have sort of attempts by existing regulatory infrastructure to absorb new risks is the carbon border adjustment discussion going on in the European Union. If suddenly, the price of carbon is set via trade agreements between regional trading blocks or bilaterally between countries, that's going to make a very big difference very quickly because effectively it will end the old argument that the externalities involved in climate change are its main motor, it's what drives it. The climate change causing pollutants that we emit through industrial processes are free and therefore we have too much of them. That'ssort of the basic logic of climate change. Soit's going to be really interesting to see how the carbon border adjustment debate evolves in Europe and how quickly it gets absorbed into the international trading system.
Caitlin Dean: Elree, what about how companies have to report these investments? Harlin alluded to sometimes companies can make promises that they don't necessarily fulfill. What are the metrics people are looking for to hold them accountable and how reliable is that data?
Elree Winnett Seelig: Yeah, of course you can't have an ESG conversation or a sustainability investing conversation without talking about the data. And the reality is it's not of a high quality generally speaking. I mentioned that the investment structures and strategies that we used in ESG 1.0 were pretty simplistic, the data is as well. And investors have been really reliant on third party ratings, but a few years in, a lot of investors have become a lot more sophisticated. Now they're looking for more granularity and context in that data. They want it to be less black box and many of them have built their own ESG analytical frameworks and data architecture. And most importantly, they actually want access to the raw data. And it's really about disclosure, because the data that we have isn't of the quality that we need for making financial decisions.
The other thing that I think is sort of interesting. I talk about asymmetry in the markets when you have those big asset managers in the big firms that combine multiple sources of data. They're engaging with clients so they're able to enhance that data. They have big teams of analysts. So you have this information asymmetry, which is great if you're going to arb that market, but the reality is I fear that it's going to stall widespread ESG adoption. Getting back to that idea about dual return products that we spoke about at the beginning of the conversation, as we think about those dual returns, we also have to think about what we're measuring in terms of societal good and outcomes.
So not just financial returns, but societal good. Corporates need to take it really seriously because they need to stay relevant to that investment universe that an asset manager uses to define their portfolio. In terms of metrics themselves, we look at them being quantitative. So science-based like greenhouse gas emissions, but we look at OPEX and CAPEX, we look at pay gaps, we look at team diversity, supply chain diversity, materiality. What we're starting to see more of is a focus on momentum. So what we're trying to do, many asset managers and others are trying to build up, basically a time series of these material factors so that you can start sort of analyzing the momentum that a company has in becoming more sustainable or meeting their targets.
Caitlin Dean: So as we speak about regulations, that's also part of the broader relationship between government and companies when it comes to investing. So Ro, what are some of the broader political reasons for sustainable investment growing and the implications of that?
Rohitesh Dhawan: Caitlin, there's a view that may sound cynical, but even if it is, I think it's true, which is that governments have been supporting by and large, sustainable finance frameworks in order to outsource some of the most politically difficult decisions to building a sustainable society. And in that sense, you could see them essentially passing the buck onto the finance sector to force the change in society that comes with pretty significant political consequences to doing it yourself as a government. So for instance, it'sreally hard territory and Gerry will have many war stories to tell about this, to impose an economy-wide carbon price. Even though, generally it's recognized that that's one of the best ways to move to a more sustainable society. So instead, you have companies and the financial sector, that's having to use a combination shadow pricing and own assumptions to try and make the same kind of decisions that a top-down carbon price may have allowed them to do with greater certainty.
I think that interplay is part of the reason why we've seen so many individual companies and groups of companies in the form of business associations, like the US business round table, proactively call for a carbon price. And it may sound strange that you have some of the world's largest emitters asking governments to set a carbon price. But the reason for that is that a bottom-up patchwork off voluntary initiatives is really not a perfect replacement for a coordinated, comprehensive top-down framework. But recognizing those political constraints, investors and companies have gotten on with it. And as Gerry was saying and Harlin mentioned too, they're not waiting for governments to make a move, they're doing it themselves.
Now the question becomes, we are still hurtling towards a climate crisis because it's been too little too late. When it comes to some other global crises will the same thing happen? So we're living through a mass extinction of species. And if once again, governments are relegating the need to act to companies and investors, we may indeed be too late to save literally a million species from going extinct. Similarly, would we be too late to solve some of the issues on inequality, such that they become baked into society and extremely hard to reverse? In those sorts of questions, I think bottom-up leadership from companies and investors is absolutely necessary, but often an imperfect substitute for top-down political leadership.
Caitlin Dean:Elree, what are the societal impacts we're talking about and how will they affect things like asset allocation, investment strategies, and business models overall?
Elree Winnett Seelig:Yeah, I would actually underscore what Ro just said about the fact that I really think a lot of political leaders are outsourcing their obligations to address the issues. So when I think about the three biggest issues, obviously climate change is one of them, inequality and the geopolitical implications of that, and of course, biodiversity loss. And I think biodiversity lossin particular is the one place that the corporates are actually leading instead of the investors. And how's it impacting asset allocation? I think in two ways. The first one is how it is perceived sort of what is the risk of the activity or the company perception. Soit's first looked through a lens of risk. So what is the risk of asset stranding?
What is the franchise risk to an organization being shunned by investors because you are causing deforestation either through beef production or through palm oil. But I think the second way and the more hopeful way is that we look at these societal issues through opportunity. And I think we've all spoken to the fact that there has been out performance by the strong ESG scoring companies and that ability, that interest by investors to deliver outcome with how they deploy their capital. Both of those are really transforming business models.
Caitlin Dean: Harlin, how is social responsibility viewed differently outside the United States, in different regions around the world?
Harlin Singh: Sure. Yeah, we touched on this a little bit earlier. But in my role, I work with individuals and families across their asset allocation, thinking about their investment portfolios. And a lot of that work also brings into the fold conversations around their legacy and philanthropic endeavors and how they consider their responsibility to society, and that's increasingly taking a part in conversations around investments globally. We're starting to see a significant pickup and interest from clients in Asia and Latin America and even in the US and this conversation is really encompassing everything from the debt values alignment. But also, thinking about how companies not only would benefit from lower levels of risk with higher ESG standards, but also those opportunities that Elree mentioned, in that double bottom line investing.
And then of course the onset of COVID has highlighted that the S, the social factors and the thought process from our clients to really think about how companies are impacting their supply chains, their employees, what they're doing to step in and really address the needs of all of their stakeholders. An area that we've been seeing a lot of interest in is looking for investments in minority-owned businesses and affordable housing. So I think that kind of desire to provide that bridge financing from individuals and families is significant around the world.
Rohitesh Dhawan:Caitlin, I just wanted to underscore that on some of these marquee sustainability issues, we're actually seeing the Global South offer somepretty leading solutions. It's easy to think of sustainability as a Western rich country trend, but in fact, some of the solutions may lie in some of the larger emerging markets. I just think of two key issues. One the issue of race relations, which has become so salient this year, and not least because of the killing of George Floyd in the United States. But when you consider that there are several economies in the Global South that have had affirmative action type policies to address some of the structural inequalities. And not that affirmative action is the right policy framework for every country, but certainly there's a richness of experience in large emerging markets like South Africa, for instance, on a affirmative action that I think may be the bedrock of solutions in the future.
And secondly, on this issue of inequality, I think about the law in India that requires companies above a certain size to invest 2% of net profits into corporate social responsibility act is quite significant. It's a different model to encourage companies to get involved in the wellbeing of communities. And of course, there are several examples of Indian companies that have been doing this and at rates even greater than 2% for several decades. But I suspect that that sort of policy measure becomes more commonplace in the years to come.
Caitlin Dean:And Harlin, you'd mentioned COVID, which is of course, sort of top of mind for everyone now. Gerry, you had also brought that upsort of earlier in your comments, but it seems maybe everyone has been so panicked with COVID right now that it's hard to focus on other priorities. But that's also an example of why we need to invest in the right things for the future, for down the road. So would you like to follow up on your earlier comments at all, Gerry?
Gerry Butts: Sure. I think the good news is that people can walk and chew gum at the same time. I think that in governments and in large companies and large investment houses around the world, that people are taking immediate measures to deal with the pandemic, but they're also keeping their eye on the long-term. In the end, we're in this soup because of a very poor interaction between our species and other species and the supply chains and economic models that have been set up that facilitate that kind of interaction. So in a sense, you hear this all the time in climate policy circles, that COVID is climate at hyper speed, but climate is a much larger problem. And I think it's encouraging that governments around the world have been keeping their eye on that ball in 2020, when they've had so much more to worry about.
Caitlin Dean:Harlin, let's talk a little bit more about the groups of people who are driving this change. Ro brought up how this isn't just a wealthy country phenomenon. And we point to women and millennials as often driving a lot of the change that we see in this area. Is that mostly the case or is there a broader group or a broader coalition that's demanding action?
Harlin Singh:I think this is a statistic that is broadly used. 90% of millennials and 85% of women care about investing this way. I think that is more of an issue with perhaps the survey or the way the question is asked rather than really highlighting what's truly the case. And I think really when we look across investor preference, it'spretty widespread. I would say those numbers hold true for our male clients as well. And I think investors across the board are thinking about these things, not just in terms of risk, but also opportunity. At the very least I think for investors, I would say in the next three to five years, I would expect every investment decision maker to be taking these risks into account when making an investment decision, or they'd be foolish. But I do think that from an opportunity standpoint, also the interest is broad and across demographics.
Caitlin Dean:If there's really one key point, you'd like our listeners to take away from this today, what would it be?
Harlin Singh: I think one real key point is that we'll continue to see investment opportunities and what we've called double bottom line investing or true impact investing, where investment dollars can be a catalytic source for environmental and social change.
Rohitesh Dhawan:I know it's been overused, but I really think it sums up where we are today, which is that we've been conditioned to think about what the business case for sustainability is, essentially saying that we should be more sustainable because it helps the planet, it helps profits, and it helps people. I think actually wherewe're headed to in the future is the question's going to be, what is the sustainability case for business? In the sense that you cross a threshold beyond which if an entity doesn't have sustainability at its core, its ability to operate in any respect is going to be significantly curtailed. So I think we're living through a shift where we're no longer going to have to make the case for sustainability. Instead, companies that think they can operate without this as a core operating principle are going to find it harder and harder to survive.
Gerry Butts: I would just maybe add one thought to what RO just summarized and that is we're probably at the end of the beginning of a very large change in the economy, where we're being forced by facts on the ground and all the dynamics we've been describing to absorb into our economic models, things that have been external to them. And that has a big macro challenge associated with it and it has a million micro challenges in separating good information from bad information and rethinking the way we think about calculate and absorb risk into the way we invest.
Elree Winnett Seelig: Yeah. I think it behooves all of us to look at the risk that is embedded in our portfolios, analyze that, make sure that you're pricing the right return into it, and then figure out what you want to achieve. Figure out what you're going to contribute to the transition. Right now, we are at the early days, but you will find a product that meets your needs to give you that dual return that you might be looking for.
Caitlin Dean: Thank you all so much for some really insightful comments and a great discussion. Really appreciate you all joining today.
Elree Winnett Seelig: Thanks so much.
Harlin Singh: Thank you.
Gerry Butts: Thank you, Caitlin.
Rohitesh Dhawan: Thanks so much everybody.
Caitlin Dean: That's it for this episode of Living Beyond Borders. Stay with us throughout the fall as we look at the biggest issues impacting your world and your money. Next time, looking ahead to 2021. I'm Caitlin Dean, thanks for listening.