Pan-European Sustainable Investment Training Course Project Consortium Looks to The Future

Financial advisers and other finance professionals with an interest in sustainable and responsible investment will now have an exciting new opportunity to learn more about this rapidly growing and evolving area.  Beginning in June 2015, a consortium of nine European partners, among them UKSIF, the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association, have worked together to develop a sustainable investment training course for financial advisers. The training programme is composed of different modules, including e-learning units, webinars and in some countries, in-person workshops.

Course participants are not expected to have any existing expertise and experience with sustainable investment. Financial advisers who are already active in this area have the option of skipping the first, entry-level module and advancing straight to the more in-depth sections.

This Sustainable Investment Training Course is part of the Lifelong Learning Programme supported by the European Commission. The project consortium is made up of the following organisations:

• OeGUT – Austria (Project Coordinator)
• akaryon GmbH – Austria
• ECOeffekt – Germany
• Ethix SRI Advisors – Sweden
• FNG – Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland
• Kalaidos Univ. of Applied Science – Switzerland
• Novethic – France
• UKSIF – United Kingdom
• U Ghent – Belgium

The pilot phase of the course has functioned as a test run and has been used to evaluate and improve the course. UKSIF and the other partners are now in the planning stages of how best to offer the course to financial advisers based in their respective countries. UKSIF hope to use the course as a tool to engage with mainstream financial advisers who are becoming increasingly aware of client interest in this area.

Further information about the course can be found at www.sustainable-investment.eu.