The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (Kuwait Chapter) held a thought-provoking session on the topic “Rising Relevance of ESG Based Investing” in Crowne Plaza Hotel, Farwaniya on 3rd June 2023.

The session was attended by a large audience of 100+ professionals and the Keynote speaker was Ms. Roopa Satish – Country Head Sustainable Banking & Head Portfolio Management & Data Science of IndusInd Bank. The speaker travelled all the way from India and is a pioneer in the field. Ms. Satish is also on the Board of Governors of IIM Lucknow, she was instrumental in launching India’ first Impact financing unit, USD 12.12 billion green fixed deposit issuance. She was also instrumental in Indusind Bank making it to the international Carbon Disclosure Project list for the sixth consecutive year, the only Indian Bank to make it.

The Chairperson of the Chapter CA Sriram Gopalakrishnan welcomed the members and in his opening remarks ‘underscored the importance of the topic Rising relevance of ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) in recent times and will be even more in future. What started off as a clone of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now slowly gaining traction.

The session was well structured explaining the broad framework around ESG, its concept and how it is attuned to business and shall make money for stakeholders to gain traction.

Speaker Ms. Roopa Satish was very categorical through various statistical presentations in highlighting ESG significance in current times and highlighted how the organizations are increasingly applying ESG factors as part of their analysis process to identify material risks and growth opportunities.

The lecture session was followed by an interesting Q&A session, and it is emphasized at the end that ESG is not mainly reporting and disclosure based but can make a real and meaningful change in the way business is run.

Chapter Vice chairperson CA Rabin Gonsalves shared that the session was highly appreciated by Senior leaders of local businesses given the increasing relevance of the topic. The representatives of the sponsors for the event NBK and Oracle and Al Mulla exchange were also present. The chapter is committed to such informative sessions in future.