Scientific Beta

Scientific Beta Day Europe 2022, taking place on 9 December, 2022 in Amsterdam, will focus on the need to question smart strategies and climate investing. Themes to be addressed include Navigating the Factor Menu: Differentiate between Pricing and Priced Factors, How to Integrate the Net-Zero Framework Recommendations into Portfolio Construction, Assessing Greenwashing in Portfolio and Benchmark Construction, Macroeconomic Exposures in Equity Portfolio Construction, Case Study: Managing Macro Risks in Equity Portfolios, and Net-Zero Alignment and Fossil-Free Investments.

Overview

The annual conference is organised by Scientific Beta within the framework of EDHEC Business School, a leading academic institution, as part of its policy of transferring know-how to the industry.

The conference will include multiple plenary sessions, workshops and practical sessions presenting the latest advances in smart beta and climate strategy design and implementation for the benefit of the asset owner and financial advisory communities.

The 2022 edition of the conference will focus on the need to question smart strategies and climate investing.

Programme

  7:30am-8:15am: Registrations, Morning Tea and Coffee

  10:30am-11:00am: Morning Break

  12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch Break

  3:00pm-3:15pm: Afternoon Break

> Speaker biographies

Registration

The conference is reserved for asset owners (including pension schemes, charities, endowments, foundations, insurance companies, single family offices and financial executives from non-financial companies) and institutional consultants.

Admission is only valid when confirmed by the organisers, who reserve the right to refuse any registration request in order to preserve the diversity of the audience.

To register, please visit https://eur.cvent.me/70Qwr?RefId=Delegate.

Venue

Hyatt Regency Amsterdam
Sarphatistraat 104
Amsterdam, 1018
Netherlands

About Scientific Beta

Scientific Beta aims to encourage the entire investment industry to adopt the latest advances in smart factor and ESG/Climate index design and implementation. Established in December 2012 by EDHEC-Risk Institute, one of the top academic institutions in the field of fundamental and applied research for the investment industry, as part of its mission to transfer academic know-how to the financial industry, Scientific Beta shares the same concern for scientific rigour and veracity, which it applies to all the services that it provides to investors and asset managers. We offer the smart factor and ESG/Climate solutions that are most proven scientifically, with full transparency of both methods and associated risks.

On January 31, 2020, Singapore Exchange (SGX) acquired a majority stake in Scientific Beta. SGX is maintaining the strong collaboration with EDHEC Business School, and principles of independent, empirical-based academic research, that have benefited Scientific Beta’s development to date.

Scientific Beta has developed two types of expertise over the years corresponding to two major concerns for investors:

To date, Scientific Beta is offering two major types of climates objectives:

Since 2015, offerings with financial objectives respecting ESG and Carbon constraints. These offerings correspond to the application of exclusion filters, the design of which allows the financial characteristics of the index to be conserved. This involves reconciling financial objectives and compliance with ESG norms and climate obligations. As such, the Core ESG, Extended ESG and Low Carbon filters can be integrated into smart beta or cap-weighted offerings in line with the financial objectives targeted by the investor.

Since 2021, Scientific Beta has been offering indices with pure climate objectives (Climate Impact Consistent Indices) that allow climate exclusions and weightings to be combined in order to translate companies’ climate alignment engagement into portfolio decisions.

Since it was acquired by SGX in January 2020, Scientific Beta has accelerated its investments in the area of Climate Investing as part of the SGX Sustainable Exchange strategy, which is mobilising an investment of SGD 20 million. In addition, EDHEC and Scientific Beta have set up a EUR 1 million/year ESG Research Chair at EDHEC Business School.

With a concern to provide worldwide client servicing, Scientific Beta is present in Boston, London, Nice, Singapore and Tokyo. As of June 30, 2021, the Scientific Beta indices corresponded to USD 63.75bn in assets under replication. Scientific Beta has a dedicated team of 55 people who cover not only client support from Nice, Singapore and Boston, but also the development, production and promotion of its index offering. Scientific Beta signed the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) on September 27, 2016. Scientific Beta became an associate member of the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) on April 9, 2021.

Today, Scientific Beta is devoting more than 40% of its R&D investment to Climate Investing and more than 45% of its assets under replication refer to indices with an ESG or Climate flavour. As a complement to its own research, Scientific Beta supports an important research initiative developed by EDHEC on ESG and climate investing and cooperates with V.E and ISS ESG for the construction of its ESG and climate indices.

On November 27, 2018, Scientific Beta was presented with the Risk Award for Indexing Firm of the Year 2019 by the prestigious professional publication Risk Magazine. On October 31, 2019, Scientific Beta received the Professional Pensions Investment Award for “Equity Factor Index Provider of the Year 2019.” On February 2, 2022, Scientific Beta was named ‘Best Specialist ESG Index Provider’ at the ESG Investing Awards 2022.

Contact

Joanne Finlay
E-mail: scientificbetadays@scientificbeta.com