SRI-CONNECT aims to provide a safe marketplace where SRI professionals can meet to discuss and develop ideas and investment themes
To protect this environment, on registration, users of the site are required to acknowledge and agree to the site's Conditions of Use and its policies on: Personal Information & Privacy, Content & Copyright, Competition and Investment Compliance.
In addition to these, we also ask users to work within the spirit of the site outlined below. Although we do not want to be overly prescriptive of this, we believe the following elements to be important:
Investment-focussed
SRI-CONNECT is designed to help SRI investors to make better investment decisions; it does this by improving the depth and efficiency of communications between companies, investors and their respective advisors by giving them all a platform to represent themselves, their activity, their interests and their needs to their professional counterparties, to share news and analysis, to develop and present their ideas and to join investment debate.
The site is primarily a marketplace for ideas; it is not intended to be a marketplace for services; nor is it provided as a place to prosecute pressure campaigns.
(We recognise that displays of expertise on the site may establish the credentials of research providers and lead to sales off the site. We do not object to this, providing that on-site communications are justified by their research content and the site itself is not used for the active sale of services or for the prosecution of partisan campaigns.)
We therefore ask users to:
- Present but don't promote
- Meet but don't market
- Confer but don't campaign.
Commitment to SRI
The developers of SRI-Connect believe that SRI/ESG can be a constructive and progressive force for the delivery of sustainable development and we hope that users share this fundamental aspiration. (NB this does not mean that we agree with all aspects of SRI/ESG as they stand and indeed, we actively wish to encourage debate about and constructive criticism of SRI/ESG strategies, techniques and ideas).
What goes on the site, stays on the site
To protect the site as a safe place for the exchange of information and ideas - even as they are developed, the site operates the simple rule that: “What is published on the site, stays on the site”.
Users are welcome to incorporate news, analysis or other information that they find on the site into their own work to help them develop their own investment ideas and approaches. However, they are not permitted to report on or reproduce that information outside the site. (Unless, of course, it can be independently sourced externally or if the expressed permission of the original publisher has been given.) (NGO & media users, in particular, are warned that any breach of this will result in an immediate ban.)
Factor four
SRI-CONNECT has set itself the target of supporting a ‘factor four’ improvement in the efficiency of SRI communications: whereby we hope to enable all users to achieve twice as much in half the time. We therefore urge users to consider the site as predominantly a practical time-saving tool.
Power to (all of) the people
SRI-CONNECT believes that the creativity and application of committed and intelligent people withi the industry will drive SRI forward faster than the development of abstract analytical techniques or the collation of vast datasets. The controlling principle behind the site, therefore, is that the needs of individual users are central.
For too long, SRI has suffered from the assumption that "SRI is..." or "ESG needs..." when in fact, the SRI/ESG industry contains a wide diversity of organisations and individuals with widely differing objectives and widely differing views and needs.
SRI-Connect’s exclusively web-based platform is structured to be inclusive of all types of organisation from all geographies, markets, company sizes etc and to include them within the SRI/ESG dialogue.
Simple market principles teach us that the broader and deeper a market is, the greater the efficiency available to all.
We hope that the site will incorporate:
- Consensus views
- Diverse views
- Thought-leading views
More importantly, we hope that each and every user will be able to tailor the information that they transmit and receive via the site precisely to their own individual needs.
Policy and practice
SRI-Connect aims to support both:
- The practice of sustainable investment analysis with information and tools
- Discussions about the development of SRI strategy, markets and policy
We make a clear distinction between the two areas and encourage users to do likewise.
Compete and collaborate
Social networks depend on collaboration by users; investment markets depend on competition between organisations. SRI-CONNECT works hard to balance these competing requirements as follows:
- In this spirit of collaboration, we have started by providing a large amount of information for free and we hope that site users will respond by doing likewise
- In the spirit of competition, we have carefully limited which aspects of profiles can be seen by different user types; we are most careful about restricting any information about an organisation that can be seen by its direct competitors.
Before using the site, we advise all participants to take a moment to consider what information is competitively privileged and what can be shared for mutual benefit.
Commercial but free
SRI-CONNECT is commercial but free.
- It is commercial to enable future development and also because altruistic offerings in the SRI/ESG market usually do more harm to the industry than good
- It is free - as our desire for inclusivity leads us to price membership at a level that is easily accessible to any participant in the industry
Imitate and innovate
The objective of ‘integrating’ SRI within mainstream investment continually presents the question of whether SRI should seek to imitate mainstream investment processes or whether it should seek to innovate and discover new techniques that take it beyond the limitations of the mainstream.
SRI-Connect itself has innovated to imitate. Its innovation lies in its use of digital media tools; this enables to imitate efficiently the news streams, ‘market buzz’ and corporate access that is found within ‘the mainstream’.
Regulatory compliance still applies
The collaborative capabilities of digital media subvert conventional top-down communication processes by giving all users the ability to publish their activities to the world. SRI-Connect aims to achieve the same effect but reminds users that when posting information to our site, they are still bound by any rules (written or unwritten) that govern the compliance or competitive behaviour within their organisations – just as they would be if using email or publishing documents to the wider public.
Organisations and individuals can record applicable 'Regulatory and Compliance disclosures' within their profiles; after this has been done, viewers should consider users' contributions to the site as covered by the disclosures contained within their profiles.
Personal or professional?
Users are encouraged to use the Buzz and Discussion Groups to post thoughts and comments in a professional (rather than personal) capacity.
To enable this, all users are reminded that SRI-CONNECT is a shared research tool operating with a broad but closed community. It is not a media outlet nor a sales platform - as a result, such contributions do not have to be fully-formed views for public consumption.
From this, readers may infer that a user's comments are likely to be in line with the specific SRI/ESG responsibilities of that individual's role and responsibilities.
Readers may not, however, conclude that a view posted by an individual user represents the view of the organisation that they work for. Indeed, unless a view is specifically attributed as belonging to an entire organisation, it should be assumed that this is not the case.
