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This study, supported by The Health Foundation and led by Niamh O’Sullivan and Simon Bishop in Nottingham University Business School, investigates the actions investors are taking on health. It involves a detailed, critical analysis of the top 10 UK asset managers’ (collectively representing approximately £584 billion assets under management as per May 2024) reporting on a range of prioritised public health themes in order to gain better insight into the nature and impact of investor action on health and health equity.

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Research summary

Background

In recent years, an increasing amount of work has focused on the commercial determinants of health (CDoH) – that is, the various ways in which private sector activities can negatively or positively impact people’s physical and mental health (World Health Organisation).

To date, however, much of the focus has been on the manufacture and sale of a small range of harmful commodities, such as tobacco, alcohol and ultra processed foods, and the commercial interests that surround these. There has been far less consideration of the role of institutional investors (asset owners and managers) in this picture. In particular, there has been insufficient attention paid to how investment in these commodities or other economic/commercial activities affect public health, how these health impacts can simultaneously pose a financial risk to investors and, consequently, how investors could be mobilised to improve health and health equity.

In response, this project sought to examine the extent to which investors are integrating health-related matters into their responsible investment activities and how this is impacting, or could impact, public health.

Outcome:

The results of this study show that some positive work is being undertaken on certain health themes – such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR), employment and physical and mental health, financial security and wellbeing, nutrition, and water pollution – across the top UK asset managers; yet none of them are reporting on all of the 14 health themes (1) under investigation in a strong and consistent fashion.

In fact, the research found that only two of these asset managers have explicitly made health one of their current environmental, social and governance (ESG) thematic priorities. Only one of those two asset managers has a dedicated health policy, and this health policy only prioritises two of the themes under review (AMR and nutrition). In addition, there were some surprising findings regarding asset manager inaction and lack of disclosure on themes known to be harmful to health, such as alcohol, air pollution, gambling and tobacco.

These results evidence serious gaps and inconsistencies across asset manager approaches to, and disclosures of, their health-related investment activities that require pressing attention if public health is to be recognised and addressed as a systemic risk by the investment community. In doing so, the study simultaneously uncovers the potential for investors to be at the vanguard of commercial, economic and social determinants of health reform, and offers recommendations for investors and policy makers on how this could be achieved.

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Note:

(1) Air pollution; alcohol; access to medicine and antimicrobial resistance (AMR); employment and physical and mental health; financial security and wellbeing; gambling and mental health; housing, infrastructure and health; nutrition and obesity; technology and physical and mental health; tobacco; and water pollution.

 

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