Last week, Göteborg Energi announced that we are one of the stipends to receive their scholarship Tänk:Om. The price is to help sustainable solutions to grow and succeed! Thank you so much!

Esgaia, a platform for managing active ownership, has been selected by East Capital Group as the platform to manage and monitor its engagement activities globally. Esgaia is a tool that facilitates investors’ engagement with portfolio holdings and other stakeholders, by structuring data and processes, automating reports and allowing collaboration with other investors. Esgaia's aim is to set a global standard for successful active ownership processes. As a responsible owner, East Capital Group has been engaging with portfolio companies since 1997; first in Russia and Eastern Europe, then globally from 2010 as East Capital expanded into global frontier and emerging markets. East Capital Group is also active in developed markets through Espiria, whose portfolios of global equities and Nordic fixed income will have a strong sustainability focus, with the Sustainable Development Goals constituting the main driving force, and through Adrigo, which invests in and works closely with small and mid-cap Nordic companies. “We have always had the belief that active ownership is an effective mechanism to reduce risks, maximise returns and have a positive real impact on the world, by driving improvement in corporate practices. We are also convinced that engagement is a much more powerful method than divestment,” says Karine Hirn, Partner and Chief Sustainability Officer of East Capital Group. “With the help of Esgaia, we can streamline our workflows and increase the efficiency of our efforts.” “We are really excited to see a leading asset manager having active ownership as a top priority. Their commitment to sustainability is genuine, and it is inspiring that they are open to adopting new technology to reach their goals,” says Anton Ljung, co-founder and CEO at Esgaia. Contact information Karine Hirn, Partner, East Capital Group mediaenquiries@eastcapital.com Ilze Johnston, Marketing Communications Manager, East Capital Group +46 8 505 88 550 mediaenquiries@eastcapital.com Anton Ljung, CEO, Esgaia AB anton@esgaia.com About East Capital Group East Capital Group comprises several strategies and specialisations to offer active management solutions in equities, bonds and real estate assets with a clear ESG framework. Founded in Sweden in 1997, East Capital Group manages a total of EUR 4.5 billion for a broad range of international investors. The main operations include East Capital − specialising in emerging and frontier market equity investments, East Capital Real Estate − managing commercial real estate investments in the Baltic region, Espiria − offering bespoke global and Nordic equities and fixed income strategies, and Adrigo − offering hedge fund strategies targeting absolute returns. About Esgaia Esgaia is a Stockholm-based startup offering institutional investors an engagement platform that simplifies active ownership. With Esgaia, investors can manage everything related to company.

During her education at Linköpings University, Hilda did a three-month-internship at Esgaia. We are very glad that she was part of our journey, and we wish her the best of luck in the future! What did you do at Esgaia? I did a three-month internship at Esgaia, working with marketing and business development. Already a few weeks into the internship I got the opportunity to do a variety of tasks including marketing and communication; creating content, researching the market, participating in several finance events, and spreading Esgaia on numerous platforms. I worked closely with the team at Esgaia, supported in sales, and got the opportunity to take part in the business development. What did you learn? The first thing I did when I started the internship at Esgaia was to put myself into the world of sustainable finance and to learn about active ownership - which is super interesting! Since Esgaia is a very young company I got the opportunity to, together with the rest of the team, build marketing around the product. From this I have learned to create and coordinate content in a suitable way, spreading awareness of Esgaia and reaching out to our audience. By working with the team behind Esgaia, I gained knowledge about sales and how to strategically develop the product. How was it working at Esgaia? It has been very inspiring and rewarding. By working at Esgaia I have been working with a highly engaged and encouraging team. Development and creativity are incorporated into the company as well as in all work tasks. I received the freedom to take responsibility for the tasks during the internship and took part in a very welcoming team. What's your key takeaway from this internship? During my three months internship, I have gained valuable experience in being part of a fast-paced developing company. My skills in marketing are strongly improved and I have gathered new knowledge and understanding in the field of sustainable finance that I could not have gathered better anywhere else.

Engagements are one of the main approaches for institutional investors to conduct active ownership. It is a procedure that enhances transparency, responsibility and control over the most material ESG issues. With engagements, investors interact in corporate dialogues and together take actions towards a sustainable direction. Through successful engagements, investors improve ESG-issues and thus not only create financial value but also ethical value for the society and environment. Creating successful engagements can be tricky, but we will present engagement procedures and strategies that help to implement, maintain and achieve engagement targets successfully. As mentioned, engagements are often a long-term procedure and it is important to keep in mind that engaging, regardless of how is better than not engaging as it enables a closer relationship with the investee company and thus facilitating responsible investments. Studies have shown that engagement dialogues are the most efficient procedure to target sustainable goals, regardless of the size of investors’ shareholdings. It is thus a procedure suitable for all active owners. Active ownership engagements create mutual ESG- value for both investors and investee companies. The United Nations Principles for Responsible Investments (UNPRI) have provided how different engagement dynamics creates value for investors and companies. With these dynamics, communicative, learning and political, investors can standardize engagement procedures and create a common ground for all engagement efforts. To successfully implement engagements, investors first need to understand the investee companies' perspective, so that ESG issues are targeted efficiently. Research shows that by only demonstrating a willingness to understand the companies and its complexities, the likelihood of succeeding with an engagement enhances. Increasing investors' involvement in companies enhances control and mitigates risk. It also increases understanding of how ESG practices are managed executive management downwards to the staff and manufacturing. It helps to identify gatekeepers and other vital actors from the corporate side crucial for establishing accountability. According to studies, successful engagements take about one and a half years from being first initiated until fully succeed. It requires company disclosure and monitoring from the investors including feedback that maintains the progress of expected targets. It is beneficial for investors to make internal documentation of all ESG information generated so that monitoring and performance can be tracked and stored. It would be most efficient if investee companies integrated ESG-issues directly in shareholder reports, but this could be a targeted engagement itself. In addition, the likelihood of succeeding with an engagement increases by prior engagement experience. If succeeding with a prior engagement the likelihood of subsequent engagements to succeed and particularly if it is conducted with the same target company. By succeeding with an engagement, investors can demonstrate a practice to follow and conceptualize ESG- approaches for portfolio companies and other stakeholders. Sharing engagement cases can thus influence the finance sector and enable collaboration among other asset managers and owners. Investors can take advantage of previous demonstrated ESG-engagements in order to successfully implement new engagements. Collaboration between asset managers and investors has a great impact on increasing the success rate of ESG-engagement. Collaborative engagements, collocated with a number of investors together, is shown as the instrument contributing most positively to the success of engagements as it increases legitimacy and the power of influence. In a recent case of investor collaboration through active ownership engagement, a large Norwegian asset owner, together with a number of asset managers and service providers, made comprehensive commitments for deforestation in Brazil. The engagement is currently ongoing and has involved several policymakers. It all started with a public policy dialogue from investors through a collocated letter (find the letter here) Investors' active ownership engagements have resulted in incredible outcomes. Recently we have seen examples of engagement resulting in mitigation of deforestation, enhanced safety and improved work conditions in vulnerable industries and most important of all- it has influenced norms and set new standards for investor impact. You can find out more about successful active ownership engagement from the the UN PRI awards 2020 here To sum this up, successful active ownership engagement can be created by incorporating these three suggested strategies below: Plan the engagement together with ESG-department, investors and portfolio managers. Research the targeted company, its structure, decision procedure, the sector and country it is operating in. Plan how to conduct the engagement, look at previous successful active ownership engagement and set up expectations in a clear manner. Implement the engagement through a direct dialogue with the portfolio company, communicate the expected outcome, show involvement, demonstrate a previous engagement case and document all interactions internally. Seek collaboration with other asset managers & owners, service providers and policy makers. Maintain the engagement with dialogues through meetings, calls, emails, letters etc. Monitor and ask for disclosure. Highlight milestones of targets and be transparent about the progress. Sources: Çelik & Isaksson (2013) Institutional investors and ownership engagement; Dimson, Karakas & Li (2013) Active Ownership; Sjöström (2020) Active ownership on environmental and social issues: What works?; Harvard Business Review (2020) Shareholders are getting serious about sustainability; OECD (2014) ; UNPRI (2018) PRI Reporting Framework Main definitions (2018) How ESG engagement creates value for investors and companies; Vermeulen & Fenwick (2018) Institutional Investor Engagement: How to Create a “Stewardship Culture”,

Esgaia was founded in spring 2020 by three friends from Halmstad. Upcoming Fridays we will introduce the engaged people behind Esgaia and present their story. Today we are presenting Frida Femling, our CIO and one of the Esgaia Co-founders. She has been on this journey from the very start, from taking the idea to MVP, to launching the product. Frida is a data engineer and has experience of running her own businesses. After finishing her master’s degree in Entrepreneurship and Business Design at Chalmers University she started working full time with the development of Esgaia- launching only a few months later. Read about Frida's journey and how she, with a great combination of technical skills, creativity and a truly entrepreneurial mindset, has developed Esgaia. Frida, as the CIO and Co-founder of Esgaia, what do you do? I would say I spent 30% of the time related to the business, and 70% of the time coding. I work as a fullstack developer, building new features as well as improving the design and user experience. I believe it is the perfect mix! How has your journey been from creating the business idea to developing it till today? It’s definitely one of the coolest journeys I have been on! We started by pitching our idea with wireframes. Dependent on if that idea showed traction or not, we decided to build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). After a couple of pitches, the feedback we got was so good that we had to build an MVP. The MVP was established collectively with some of the biggest fund companies in Sweden. We iterated the MVP multiple times based on feedback which required a lot of work (I did not see the sun this summer…). When the MVP was established, it was tested by more potential customers. Then we decided to build and develop the product. Today, we have a fully working product on the market with some features left to build, but they are in the pipeline! What keeps you motivated working with a product like Esgaia? Sustainability, technology and economy are three things that are very close to my heart - and the combination of those three makes this my dream job. To improve the product and build new features is super motivating. I love following the development of the product and identify all the possibilities we have to make it a kickass product for the financial industry. What have you learned from sustainable finance and responsible investments? I have learnt a lot about active ownership and how our customers work with it. It has affected my personal investment strategy as I, in the future, will invest in transparent funds managed by active owners. It is very important that we let capital influence the sustainability strategy of large corporations. That's it for today. If you want to learn more about Esgaia stay updated here for more interesting meetings with the people behind Esgaia. Any questions? Do not hesitate to contact us. Follow us on instagram for updates on Esgaia's journey.

Esgaia was founded in spring 2020 by three friends from Halmstad, Sweden. Today we are presenting Anton Ljung, CEO and co-founder of Esgaia. Anton has a background in finance and experience in running his own business. In March he left his job in the financial sector, took his idea into realization, and started the journey with Esgaia. Read about Anton’s story behind Esgaia below and his inspiring perspective on active ownership. How did you discover the need for Esgaia? When I worked as a fund analyst at an investment firm in Stockholm, I gained insights into investors’ sustainability management and realized the importance of active ownership. Unfortunately, my experience was that it was often managed with poor structure and low transparency. After extensive research, it was clear that there was a need to streamline investors’ sustainability management. I recognized the opportunity and founded Esgaia. Why are you focusing on active ownership? First of all, it’s inspiring to see how environmental, social, and governance considerations are influencing investors' decisions. I believe finance plays a vital role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Investors cannot be a passive bystander to sustainability challenges, they have to use their influence to push companies to act more responsibly. Active ownership is about institutional investors using investments to influence companies. Active ownership is one of the most effective mechanisms to reduce risks, maximize returns, and have a positive impact on society and the environment. Divestment alone leaves investors with no voice and no potential to help drive responsible corporate performance. Active ownership is a proven investment approach, and there are a lot of cases that have led to remarkable outcomes for society and the environment. What would you like to change with Esgaia? I want to lower the barriers to active ownership. Creating and managing active ownership engagements can be a time-consuming and complex process. By simplifying this, investors can increase the quantity and the quality of engagements performed. I want all investors to have active ownership on their agenda, and I want to simplify the way active owners work today. Also, I want to facilitate and increase investors' collaboration. Sustainability is no competition. When investors come together with unified voices, remarkable outcomes can be achieved. My ambition is to make Esgaia the core of active ownership and shareholder collaboration that drives sustainable change, thus generate impact. What has the response of Esgaia been like? Institutional investors that already practice active ownership are responding positively. However, some investors are still at an early stage in their sustainable transformation. The reception for those has been mixed but overall very positive. What I have seen among institutional investors is a great willingness to take responsibility, and I am convinced that active ownership will be the key to their sustainable transformation. This year is coming to its end. What's on the agenda for 2021? We are very excited to go into 2021. This year has been hectic. We went from sketches to a product launch in a couple of months, which was challenging for our developers. Next year won’t be different. We will take the platform to new dimensions, working with integrations and develop a collaboration network that will make it possible for investors to find and collaborate with other like-minded investors. That's it for today. If you want to learn more about Esgaia stay updated here for more interesting meetings with the people behind Esgaia. Any questions? Do not hesitate to contact us. Follow us on Instagram for updates on Esgaia’s progress.

Taking action against climate change or inequalities is complex and is not solved easily through quick fixes. With active ownership, investors take responsibility and contribute with investments towards a sustainable future. Active ownership means that investors use their shareholder rights to influence issuers and improve environmental, social, and governance- performance (ESG). It can be practiced through investors interacting with portfolio companies by initiating engagements or voting at shareholder meetings. Active ownership engages multiple actors both within investor firms and externally. This is why the approach is so efficient for making impactful actions, but it is also why it can be time-consuming and confusing. With Esgaia, we are changing this. Esgaia helps investors to improve their work with active ownership. With the Esgaia platform investors can easily create engagements, log the progress, collaborate, and showcase their work. Create engagements With the EsgaiaPrimary domain platform, investors can create engagements and insert all information needed in a structural manner. Depending on the objective, users can create a thematic engagement, targeting multiple companies or a single engagement, targeting one company. Users can create collaboration by inviting other investors to their engagements. When creating an engagement users can define a range of data points such as ESG-category, materiality, extent of impact, and the SDGs related to the engagement. Engagements should be created in such a way that it aligns with the investor portfolio and purpose. Read more about how to create successful engagements here. Documentation management With Esgaia all information gathered can be documented internally in one place, simplifying the workload and enhancing transparency and availability. All interactions can be logged at the platform, ensuring that no information gets lost. It can be valuable information collected from meetings, phone calls, emails, visits or reports. Through collaborative engagements, information can be shared with other investor firms at the platform, entailing high engagement efficiency. Progress monitoring and statistical functions Investors using Esgaia can easily upload and keep track of KPIs and monitor the engagement progress. The platform provides functions giving a great overview of the engagement and its current status. This saves time and facilitates control over the entire process. All engagement with related data points, KPIs, statuses, and progress is summarized and presented in a user-friendly manner in the statistical function at the platform. All statistics and data can easily be exported to both pdf and excel. Can Esgaia be useful for your team? Request a 14-days free trial today!

Esgaia, the engagement management platform that simplifies active ownership, has been selected by Länsförsäkringar Fondförvaltning AB, as the platform to manage and monitor their active ownership activities. “Active ownership is an important part of our sustainability work. Through the collaboration with Esgaia, it will be easier to gather information about our engagements and track progress” says Sofia Aulin Head of Responsible Investments at Länsförsäkringar Fondförvaltning. “We are proud to announce that Länsförsäkringar Fondförvaltning has chosen Esgaia as the platform to streamline their active ownership activities. It’s inspiring that they are open to adopting new technologies in reaching their goals” says Anton Ljung, co-founder and CEO at Esgaia. About Länsförsäkringar Fondförvaltning Länsförsäkringar Fondförvaltning is a subsidiary of Länsförsäkringar Bank, which is owned by 23 regional insurance companies. The asset under management of Länsförsäkringar Fondförvaltning is approximately SEK 200 billion distributed over about 40 funds. About Esgaia Esgaia is a Stockholm-based startup offering institutional investors a platform that simplifies active ownership. With Esgaia, investors can manage everything in one place. Contacts Esgaia AB Anton Ljung, CEO anton@esgaia.com Länsförsäkringar Fondbolag Sofia Aulin, head of Responsible Investments Sofia.Aulin@lansforsakringar.se