INVESTMENT professionals in Hong Kong and Singapore can now access Robeco’s knowledge on sustainable investing and factor investing through its educational platform, Robeco Essentials.

Robeco Essentials aims to share Robeco’s knowledge and expertise on the latest investment topics, enable financial professionals to further improve their skills, and help clients to achieve their investment goals.

Each module includes educational content presented such as animated videos, charts, case studies, and a summary. The test at the end of each module gives participants two hours towards their Continuous Professional Development (CPD) accreditation. Robeco Essentials is recognized under the Institute of Banking and Finance Singapore’s (IBF) Financial Training Scheme (FTS).

In view of the increasing need for ESG knowledge in Asia, Robeco launched the Sustainable Investing Essentials module in May 2019, which was first offered to employees of Standard Chartered Private Bank in Asia and globally.

This module explains what sustainable investing is and how ESG integration works in this context, clarifies trends and misconceptions around sustainability investing, takes a closer look at performance and active ownership, and details a number of specific case studies.

The speed with which factor investing strategies, in particular smart beta products, have imposed themselves on the investment landscape has left many at a disadvantage when explaining factor investing to clients and prospects.

The newly added Factor Investing module provides a simple explanation of what factor investing is and all the research behind this growing approach.

Tom Keenan, head of wholesale Asia ex-Japan at Robeco, says, “Sustainable investing and factor investing are topics that are increasingly important, however, many of our clients feel they might not be equipped to talk about them. We believe we can contribute and fill these knowledge gaps with Robeco Essentials. This is just the start and we expect to launch more topics in the future that leverage Robeco’s expertise.”