{"id":487,"date":"2018-03-14T18:13:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T18:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/financeintellect.com\/home-page\/home\/?p=487"},"modified":"2018-03-28T19:49:49","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T19:49:49","slug":"indias-lessons-on-tobacco-free-investments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financeintellect.com\/home-page\/home\/indias-lessons-on-tobacco-free-investments\/","title":{"rendered":"India\u2019s lessons on Tobacco-Free Investments"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the afternoon of February 4th<\/sup>, a curious mix of audience was lining up at the sea-kissed Dome theatre of Mumbai\u2019s NSCI to attend a particular session at the 8th Edition of TEDx Gateway. The speaker was Australia-based Radiation Oncologist Dr Bronwyn King.<\/p>\n

The audience was an interesting medley because it had representatives from India\u2019s top financial institutions, insurance firms, banks, corporates and media houses, and not just the medical fraternity or people affected by cancer, as one would generally expect.<\/p>\n

The curiosity among the audience to hear out Dr. King was not unfounded as the subject of her talk was something that had attained huge consequences for the entire financial economy globally. Dr. King is the Founder and CEO of Tobacco Free Portfolios (a Not-For-Profit organization) and is an internationally renowned crusader against financial sector investments in tobacco companies.<\/p>\n

Her speech at the TedX Gateway, thus, would also center around enlightening the representatives from corporate and financial sectors in India about how essential it was for them to eliminate tobacco from their investment portfolios and adopt policies to end all any commercial engagement with tobacco manufacturing companies.<\/p>\n

Dr. King\u2019s message to the Indian financial sector was an extension of what has been a global mission for her organization — Tobacco Free Portfolios — since the past six years. The organization has been professionally engaging with the global finance sector to encourage tobacco-free investments and playing a unique role in enabling the finance sector to align with governments, the health sector and the non-government community.<\/p>\n

Tobacco Free Portfolios has been hugely successful in leading dozens of major financial institutions to reconsider commercial relationships with the tobacco industry and implement tobacco-free investment policies, enabling a whopping sum of US $10 billion to shift away from tobacco investments worldwide in the past two years alone.<\/p>\n

Speaking to\u00a0Business India<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0at the sidelines of the TEDx Gateway, Dr. Bronwyn said: \u201cThe current status quo in the global finance sector is that most pension funds, most banks and most insurers invest money in tobacco companies.\u00a0 That goes for both public and private financial institutions \u2013 it\u2019s the whole system.\u00a0 We must ask finance leaders to reconsider tobacco \u2013 this time through a health lens, and think about the impact of putting huge sums of money behind companies that make products that cause 7 million deaths every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. King\u2019s Global achievements<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Since 2012, Tobacco Free Portfolios has played an integral role in implementation of tobacco-free policies made by leading financial institutions across 11 countries, says Dr. King.<\/p>\n

World\u2019s largest insurers, major banks, fund managers, leading sovereign funds and pension funds have implemented tobacco-free investment mandates assisted by her organization.\u00a0 In the past five years, more than 80 leading financial organisations controlling trillions of USD have implemented tobacco free policies spanning investment, lending and insurance. In Australia \u2013 where the work began \u2013 60% of funds under management (with funds under management approaching 1 Trillion Australian dollars) in the Australian pension industry are now tobacco-free.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Tobacco Free Portfolios engaged with AXA, one of the world\u2019s largest insurers, and was part of their move to divest tobacco industry assets valued at 1.8 billion Euros, putting the issue firmly on the mainstream agenda. Tobacco-free investment decisions were also made by AP4 \u2013 one of the most influential pension funds in Sweden; Medibank, the largest health insurer in Australia; France\u2019s largest public pension fund Fonds De Reserves Pour Les Retraites; the Irish Sovereign Investment Fund and CalPERS, the largest public pension fund in the USA.\u00a0 In 2017, Tobacco free Portfolios was delighted to work with BNP Paribas \u2013 the largest European Bank \u2013 who went tobacco-free in November.\u00a0 This year has already seen the initiative accelerate with the largest European pension fund \u2013 ABP \u2013 announcing its tobacco-free move less than one month ago.<\/p>\n

Tobacco Free Portfolios is now engaging with large retail and investment institutions across the global finance sector, including in India, to give further wind to its mission.<\/p>\n

Stubbing\u00a0 out the tobacco menace in India<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The trend of tobacco abuse in India is increasing at alarming rates.\u00a0 According to some estimates, there are 27.5 crore tobacco users in the country and every third Indian adult uses some form of tobacco. About 10 lac Indians die from tobacco-related diseases each year and bout one-third of the population above 15 years of age is using some form of tobacco.\u00a0\u201cNearly half of the cancers in India are attributable to tobacco,\u201d\u00a0says Dr. Pankaj Chaturvedi,\u00a0\u00a0Head and Neck Cancer Surgeon at Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In recognition of the global \u2018tobacco epidemic\u2019 in 2005 the UN Tobacco Treaty was established, the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), the world\u2019s first global legally binding public health treaty. There are now 181 Parties, representing 89.4% of the world\u2019s population, which makes it one of the most widely embraced treaties in United Nations\u2019 history.<\/p>\n

India too became a signatory to FCTC and the Government has since\u00a0been\u00a0\u00a0implementing initiatives, including the National Tobacco Control Program (NTCP), for reducing tobacco usage and fulfilling its treaty obligations under FCTC.<\/p>\n

However, the mission is fraught with dichotomies as huge public monies continue to be invested into the tobacco manufacturing companies by the country’s financial sector, including some public sector companies and insurance firms.\u00a0 In India, insurance companies, including large PSU insurers, are the biggest shareholders in tobacco manufacturing companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople mostly are not even aware that their funds are being invested into the tobacco industry. Exposure to tobacco manufacturers may occur via equities, corporate bonds and derivatives,\u201d Dr. King warns.<\/p>\n

She herself was extremely disappointed when she first learnt that she and her colleagues at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne were unknowingly supporting tobacco through their superannuation (pension) investments – an action which came at the expense of their patients, whose lives, and those of their family and friends, were ravaged by the effects of lung cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cFortunately, things are changing quickly and the finance sector is coming to realize that being a good corporate citizen means collaborating across sectors and acting to help solve major global challenges. The tobacco-free finance momentum is starting to snowball.\u00a0 Finance leaders today want to be part of the solution to the tobacco epidemic, which is on track to kill 1 billion people this century,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

One can only hope that Dr. King\u2019s clarion call also awakens leaders in India\u2019s financial sector and government machinery soon enough to get their acts together and embrace tobacco-free investments.<\/p>\n

Dr. Bronwyn King, an Australian Radiation Oncologist and Founder and CEO of Tobacco Free Portfolios, engaged with India\u2019s top financial institutions and corporates at the 8th Edition of TEDx Gateway to encourage them to adopt tobacco-free investment policies. Dr. King\u2019s crusade for ending commercial engagements with tobacco firms have resulted in at least US $10 billion being shifted away from tobacco investments worldwide<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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