COIMA: sustainability and innovation at the core

Thursday, September 6, 2018

“Sustainability and innovation are becoming of increasing interest to investors. Climate change is today becoming an increasingly present factor in the real estate market” – states Stefano Corbella, Coima’s Sustainability Officer. “Within our organisation, we have adopted this concept completely, paying attention not only to the aspect of environmental sustainability, but also to social impact and the governance implications of our investments.”

“Over and above climate change,” Corbella continues, “demographic change, digital transformation and urbanisation are what represent the key trends influencing the real estate investment market. Any investor, especially if working at global level, will carry out a risk assessment on these four aspects.” But what might be the answer to managing these risks? “We need to apply sustainability and innovation.”

“Climate change needs to be assessed and faced by means of an implementation policy and strategy that matches the paradigms of a circular economy, because the complete evaluation and mitigation of the risk are fundamental to the investment strategy.”

At global level, various initiatives have emerged along these lines aimed at measuring and voluntarily certifying sustainability: What might their role be in this challenge? “If, once upon a time, we simply responded with a certification at building level, with LEED, Breeam or Well, we now consider it important to apply sustainability protocols to investment funds to classify and measure the performance of the vehicle with which the works operate. There are various growing initiatives that can evaluate the financial exposure relative to environmental aspects, such as, for example, GRESB, or TCFD (the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures).

These are key, because an investor today wants to know what you are going to do, how you are going to do it and what risk mitigation strategies you are going to adopt.”

Watch the interview with Stefano Corbella.