Stockholm, May 30, 2022

Every year CFA Society Sweden, through the “CFA Sweden ESG Award,” recognizes an individual, organization or group that has raised awareness of the importance of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) considerations in the investment process. The CFA Sweden ESG Award was presented to Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute (AFII) and Ulf Erlandsson at the Society’s Annual Forecast Dinner on May 24 in Stockholm.

“Despite the enormous increase in focus on ESG-issues within the financial industry for the past few years, fixed income has remained slightly in the shadows. The Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute and Ulf Erlandsson have done a tremendous job of both shining a light on inconsistencies of fixed income market players and widening the debate on sustainable bonds. This reinforces the public trend of “follow the money” into banks, trading desks and their responsibilities and will be very important in the years to come when all commitments to Net Zero will be scrutinized,” says John Howchin, Co-Chair of CFA Society Sweden’s ESG Committee. “The Anthropocene Fixed Income institute and I, personally, are honoured by this award and very grateful to the CFA Institute Sweden for highlighting, through this award, the absolutely crucial climate change mitigation capital reallocations that need to happen in fixed income,” says Ulf Erlandsson.

Launched in July 2020, AFII is a non-profit thinktank and research institute taking a markets-based approach to positive climate impact in the fixed income markets. The image of green sprouts growing out of a trading terminal encapsulates AFII’s basic philosophy: it’s through the buy and sell decisions by bond portfolio managers and traders out there that we can change the cost-of-capital in favor of a sustainable future. It’s a gritty, technical, and quantitative effort, an everyday struggle for alpha. Yet fixed income can be extremely powerful when you direct it for a sustainable purpose. AFII founder and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Ulf Erlandsson, has a professional background as a credit portfolio manager at the Fourth Swedish State Pension Fund (AP4) and as a quant strategist at Barclays Capital. He was one of the pioneers in the green bond market as well as in high-frequency credit derivative trading and has written extensively on credit trading, climate impact in fixed income and the combination thereof over the past 15 years.  Erlandsson earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Lund University.

Previous recipients of the CFA Sweden ESG Award are:

• 2021 – Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute and Ulf Erlandsson
• 2018 – Norrsken Foundation
• 2017 – Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB)
• 2016 – Örebro Kommun and Region Västmanland
• 2015 – Steven Smit, Morningstar.
• 2014 – Mats Andersson AP4, Liza Jonson Storebrand AM and G. Hahn S. Kyrkan.
• 2013 – Hennes & Mauritz AB.
• 2012 – Peter Norman, Finansdepartementet.
• 2011 – Gunilla Hjalmarsson, Meta AM. and Anna Nilsson, Swedbank Robur.
• 2010 – Sasja Beslik, Nordea Investment Management.

Contact for inquiries:

President: Fredrik Nilsson, CFA
Vice President:  Alexander Öhrn, CFA.
CFA Society Sweden: info@cfasweden.se

About CFA Society Sweden:

CFA Society Sweden is a not-for-profit organisation of investment professionals based in Sweden, founded in 2003. It aims to promote a high level of professionalism among its members and the broader investment community. The organisation has 165 members who are CFA Charterholders.

About CFA Charterholders:

A CFA Charterholder is a person who successfully completed the CFA program which is considered amongst the most challenging financial exams in the world. There are currently over 150,000 CFA Charterholders worldwide. The CFA program is administered by the CFA Institute. www.cfainstitute.org/programs/cfa 

About CFA Society Sweden’s ESG Committee:

The CFA Society Sweden’s ESG Committee is composed of John Howchin and Henrik Malmsten. Howchin is the former Secretary-General of Council on Ethics for the First, Second, Third and Fourth Swedish national pension funds. Currently, he oversees sector strategy for the work on the Transition Decade project with the focus on the hard to abate sectors, at IIGCC and for the Climate Action100+ project, among many other engagements. Malmsten is the founder of Durable Vision Invest. An experienced portfolio manager and entrepreneur, he has a history of working in the environment industry.