Transforming Capital - William Burckart And The Necessity For Systems-Level Investing

William Burckart is today’s guest. Bill was recently in Sydney from New York where his list of credentials, accomplishments and titles is impressive - he’s the CEO of The Investment Integration Project, co-founder of Colourful Capital, an adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs and the Brandmyere Fellow for Impact and Sustainable Investing at Colombia University, he’s published a couple of really informative books, the most recent being ‘The Handbook of System-level Investing: How Experts Worth Trillions of Dollars are Rethinking Investing.’ As well as all of that his writing has featured in The Guardian, Forbes and the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

That’s a long but necessary way of saying that in the realm of systems-level investing, there are few anywhere in the world who are both as technically astute and practically experienced as Bill. What is systems-level investing you ask? Systems-level investing - as I’ve understood from reading Bill’s books, this chat and our supper club together is when financiers - be they banks, be they investors - deliberately elevate themselves above a conventional approach to asset and client focussed lending and financing and seek to use their funds as well as their influence and other assets to address issues that create systems-level risks for any and all of their more conventional activities. Think about it like this - how successful will one investment in a farmer be if the underlying volatility in crop and yield output worsens without also investing in rapid decarbonisation and broader adaptation measures? What good is funding one resilient home in a flood prone area if the majority of the rest in that area aren’t and you see localised market risk and asset depreciation? Systems-level investing is about re-framing how finance takes account of reality and the risks problems like climate change, disinformation, inequality, ocean acidification and many more and doing what the financial services industry is supposed to do anyway - appropriately price these to send market signals and drive new types of behaviours, actions and outcomes.

It’s not straight forward stuff, and many in this community lament either the unwillingness or the inability for just about all financial institutions of every size and form to do this. In this chat we get into the what some of the tangible and intangible barriers are, the limitations of sustainable and responsible investing, how to better understand the tools of systems-level investing whether you’re in finance or not, advanced user or total beginner. Much is required of many of us at this moment - and understanding how finance can and must play a role is a critical component of shifting economies and cultural norms regarding practices in the real economy. This episode isn’t just for the finance bros though, you don’t need to don a puffer vest and be sitting in Ryan’s Bar to take insights and wisdom from Bill - this is applicable to all of us who are in the game of capital. And frankly, that’s everyone, whether you like it or not.

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