The BISI research programme targets factors that affect institutional investors’ portfolio management with the aim of identifying impediments to adopting an exemplary Sustainable Investment (SI) practice and, on the basis of this knowledge, to propose measures for mainstreaming such a SI practice.

The programme’s objectives are to:

• identify potential sustainability criteria, or combinations of them, that have been overlooked;
• investigate if there are any behavioural or organisational impediments to their application;
• facilitate that, sustainability issues are incorporated into the institutional investors’ valuation process of companies.

The BISI programme consists of five projects:

Project A: Conceptual clarification and operational definition of Sustainable Investment
Project B: Developing and evaluating Sustainable Investment performance criteria
Project C: Institutional investors’ investment decision making
Project D: Influence on non-Sustainable Investment institutional investors
Project E: Proposal and test of recommendation for fiduciary duty

Project B is essential for project C that will investigate investment decision making among institutional investors to understand how the adoption of SI practice may be achieved, and for project D that will determine how SI practice adopted by key institutional investors may influence the wider market.

In project E recommendations for regulatory measures are conceived of that are acceptable to all stakeholders and that potentially will affect institutional investors to adopt a SI practice.