Mona Sea is Senior Sustainability Strategist at Lombard Odier Investment Management, where she creates investment solutions for clients to reflect sustainability as an investment conviction rather than as a reflection of values.

Before joining LOIM, Mona was a Head of Sustainable Investments at Stonehage Fleming and acted as portfolio manager to the firm’s multi-asset and equity-only sustainable investment strategies. She also contributes to multi-asset investment strategy and research and is a member of the Investment Committee. Mona has 16 years’ experience in manager selection and portfolio construction.

Prior to joining Stonehage Fleming in 2018, Mona worked at Rathbones Investment Management where she was Head of Collectives Research. At Rathbones, Mona began looking at sustainable investments through the lenses of listed renewable energy and infrastructure (public-private partnerships) but throughout her career has always prioritised best practices in governance.

She is a CFA Charterholder and has a first class BSc (Hons) degree in Economics and Politics from the University of Bristol where her studies focused on economic development and social policy.

Why is corporate culture becoming more important to you when deciding who you allocate assets to?

Corporate culture is a strong signal for governance and risk management, it also provides a signal on key person risk, which is critical for long term manager selection and client alignment.

In your view, why is it important to set a higher standard of stewardship and behaviour within the investment industry?

While fiduciary duty has always been taken very seriously in our industry, it does not necessarily mean there has been an understanding of what best practise behaviours and stewardship look like. This is understandable based on significant evolution in regulation and geographical differences. Transparent standards on best practise will benefit everyone not least clients.

Why did you decide to sit on the ACT Stewardship Council, and what does it mean to you personally?

The ACT Stewardship council is the only forum bringing together fund buyers across an array of client types and fund sellers to make incremental changes and educate on grassroots culture rather than going straight to the boardroom or numerical targets. For this reason, I expect it to be effective in making change over a generation.