CCMP Capital Advisors – Katrina Guanio – 2022
Goals
CCMP Growth Advisors, LP (“CCMP” or the “Firm”) was seeking to be a signatory to the UN Principles of Responsible Investment (“UNPRI”) and in the process also looked to update and expand its ESG policies. The Firm worked with Kat Guanio (the “Fellow”) as its EDF Climate Corps fellow in facilitating the signatory onboarding processes, authoring the Firm’s Responsible Investment Framework, providing recommendations with respect to updating pertinent policies, and creating ESG assessment models (“models”) to aid review processes during due-diligence stages and throughout the Firm’s investment lifecycle.
Solutions
For the UNPRI onboarding process, the Fellow conducted a detailed review of UNPRI’s onboarding and continuing requirements, engaged with UNPRI resource teams to obtain clarifications on requirements, conducted shadow assessment for the Firm, and performed peer benchmarking.
For the UNPRI-readiness processes, the Fellow provided meaningful recommendations to updating the Firm’s policies which included (i) institutionalizing the Firm’s existing ESG oriented practices, and (ii) expanding the original ESG policy into a Responsible Investment Framework, which incorporates best practices and recommendations from the UNPRI and the American Investment Council, while considering CCMP’s fiduciary duties and overall investment strategy. Key recommendations to the policy updates included areas of climate change risks and opportunities, stewardship, DEI, governance, and adoption of ESG risk assessment standards which CCMP will consider.
The Fellow also created models to assist the Firm in its ESG due diligence pre-investment and monitoring post-investment processes. These models offer the opportunity to streamline the Firm’s implementation of ESG-related reviews of investment prospects and engagement with portfolio companies. The models can (i) provide standardized and synthesized outputs, (ii) consider severity and probability of impacts arising from areas of improvement and opportunities identified, and (iii) capture relevant metrics for multiple industries and will assist CCMP in industry-driven data collection initiatives such as the Data Convergence Initiative. The models are replicable and may be modified as the Firm’s requirements and strategies evolve.
Potential Impact
Overall, the Fellow’s engagement (i) communicated evolving standards for responsible investment principles within the Firm, (ii) enabled CCMP to accelerate the UNPRI process, (iii) assisted CCMP’s efforts to improve engagement with investors who are progressively expressing preference for investment managers that incorporate sustainability principles as part of their investment strategies, and (iv) provided tools to assist implementation of recommended policy and process updates.
