Sustainable Finance.Live 2025 comes to a catalytic close

After summarising some of the key discussions from the day, O’Leary gave her opinion that complacency is the biggest enemy to progress in sustainability. She provided a positive outlook on the UK market, asserting that the UK has a thriving VC, tech and B Corp community, but that UK innovation is not paired enough with the need for sustainability. O'Leary pointed to the successes of B Corp resilience throughout COVID to emphasise the inherent power of organisations that have rigorous assessments in place to hold themselves accountable.

O’Leary recounted her frustrations when working in the asset management industry, given its ability to silence any suggestion of social impact and environmental governance:

“Returns are surely predicated on having the people and planetary resources to actually make those returns. But we have things in the investment industry called return-seeking portfolios, or even profit-first approaches. I don't even know what a profit-first approach is. I don't know if you could tell me what it is, because you can't start with a profit. So all these things are wicked problems, but they start with us. It's called the Anthropocene for a reason.”

Pensions as infrastructural enablers

Discussing pension fund capital as a larger driver in the transition to resilient infrastructure in the UK, O'Leary noted that it ties directly to fiduciary duty, systems thinking, and long-term sustainability. In initial conversations around ESG investments within pension fund capital, she observed how investors would ask to set up individual goals, such as climate change. O’Leary described the need to see sustainability and systems thinking in three dimensions, as everything is interconnected:

“You can’t choose to affect one thing and not be impacting everything else. It’s not possible, but levers for change are different, and this is why it requires us to think differently and outside of our disciplines. Not all of the answers are going to come from investments. They might come from governance structures.”

Referencing Sustainable Finance.Live’s theme of infrastructure, O'Leary explained the interconnectedness through that lens:

“You can see how when we’re setting climate change goals, looking at biodiversity loss, these are interconnected with infrastructure failure, our healthcare infrastructure, water, food, energy, security, all of these things. One of the biggest factors that could derail us from our climate change rules is actually things that are social and economic in nature."

Short-term vs long-term

Speaking to the confusion governments and asset managers often feel in this space, O’Leary described the industry’s misguided focus on the short-term, when long-term should be the goal. She explained how, although the members involved in pension funds are affected by places and communities, it is not these that they invest in the most:

“It's interesting that all of the things that pension funds should need and want are actually reflected in the types of infrastructure investments that exist. But for some reason, we haven't created the connective tissue to get there.”

Speaking to the changes necessary to help provide that connection between the full value of the industry and the financial needs of the environment, O’Leary outlined how fiduciary duty and policy change must focus more on the necessary long-term thinking.

Accountability and executive remuneration 

On a more personal level, O'Leary pointed to the need for accountability, employee incentivisation and the correction of significant economic inequality, to improve access to impact investing opportunities. As part of this, she described a four-part framework that provides better visibility on the impact that these funds are having in areas of sustainability and infrastructure, as a means of increasing future funding. This framework, she explains is split across:

1. Identification of impact priorities;
2. Integration of impact across mandates;
3. Contribution to the intended impact; and
4. Measurement, management and reporting of intended impact.

Summarising, O’Leary reiterated the importance of seeing sustainability and infrastructure through an interconnected lens. She emphasised the need to appreciate not just the end-point goals of climate change and infrastructure resilience, but the need for change at the start of the funding funnel. Answering a question about this in the final Q&A, O’Leary concluded with an impactful statement on the inequality between employee and executive remuneration:

“You have to make leaders feel responsible for all of the people in their business. That's why, when we looked at my compensation, it was pegged. So for me to do well, I have to bring everyone with me...Because we recognised that there’s a systemic risk that we're contributing to and actually, we’re not really a sustainable business if the employees we have are going to retire into poverty.”