Fiera Real Estate UK Sustainable Investing Report

The last year has proved to be another challenging year for financial markets, a consequence of continued geo-political and economic instability. Despite ongoing regulatory and investor pressure to further advance ESG practices, market headwinds proved to be a difficult obstacle for those implementing sustainable investing strategies in 2023. Scarce capital raising opportunities combined with muted investment activity led to heightened cost concerns; and whilst we didn’t see a complete de-prioritisation of ESG initiatives, ESG was certainly in strong competition with other priorities.

At Fiera Real Estate, we are of the belief that the integration of ESG factors has not replaced a fund manager’s fiduciary duty to deliver financial performance but is rather a part of that fiduciary duty granted to us as stewards of the capital we manage on behalf of our clients and partners. It is clear to us that investors expect financial performance which incorporates careful analysis of ESG considerations.

Despite market turmoil, our commitment to sustainable investing has remained unchanged, and our progress in 2023 reflects that. In Canada, we met our 2023 carbon reduction targets¹ which directly align with our carbon reduction pathways. In addition, the deployment of electricity and water meters has propelled us into a new era of real-time analytics and proactive building management.

In the UK, we have similarly reduced our overall carbon emissions, with a significant decrease of 30% in scope 3 emissions in our Long Income strategy from baseline figures. We launched a new European Real Estate Debt strategy in 2023, which was classified as Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2019/2088 (“Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation”, “SFDR”), alongside a new Sustainable Lending Framework. In both Canada and the UK, our continuous progress resulted in elevated Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (“GRESB”) scores across all participating strategies.

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