About us
To promote responsible investment concepts and practices, fund managers, specialised social and environmental analysts, consultants, trade unionists, academics, clergy and citizens gathered to create the French Social Investment Forum – French SIF. With a common goal, to ensure that more people invest based on the idea of social cohesion and sustainable development.
The French SIF draws its inspiration from the experiences of its Anglo-Saxon counterparts, both American (US SIF) and British (UKSIF). The French SIF, along with UKSIF, is a member of the European Social Investment Forum: EuroSIF, which was officially launched in November 2001. The French SIF is a founding member of Eurosif.
What is Socially Responsible Investment?
To invest in a socially responsible fashion is:
- To recognise that an investor is in someway responsible for a part of the results caused by any economic activity;
- To decide to accept this responsibility, by identifying the investment and the risk taken, and to show solidarity with the beneficiary company;
- To broaden the horizon of investment to include the time necessary for development of all necessary aspects;
- To widen the performance criteria to include social and environmental standards related to the activity one is investing in.
Socially responsible investment goes against the evolution of investment practices on financial markets that have been noted over the past few years. This evolution is characterised by:
- Attention being orientated towards the behaviour of players on the market rather than the realities and performances of companies;
- The choice to use the average market performance, which is directly related to macro-economic performance, as a reference rather than the performance of companies;
- The creation of financial tools and risk covering techniques rather than direct action around these risks.
and thus reduced:
- The optimisation of resource allocation that should be left up to the market
- The ability to anticipate the market based on an under estimation of the costs of below-average social and environmental performances in companies.
What is the French Social Investment Forum?
A place where like-minded people meet in order to:
- Promote the concept and practices of social responsible investment; fund managers, specialised social and environmental analysts, consultants, etc. with their European colleagues at Eurosif, as well as their international partners (see SIF network),
- Steer legislative and regulatory texts in a socially responsible direction;
- Promote adopting good practice codes through personal and collective savings;
- Expand the approach of company analysts by including extra-financial dimensions as well as by developing presentation methods of company performances to the analyst community;
- Evaluate the progress made in SRI development by updating results from surveys and reports in this area.
Vocation and objectives
The main objective of the French Social Investment Forum is to contribute to the elaboration of public policies concerning SRI, to promote social responsible investment practices, to support research activities around SRI and to set up a resource centre in this domain.
By actively participating in parliamentary and public debates, the French SIF has contributed to the following results: laws on the generalisation of Employee Savings Plans and on the creation of a French Retirement Reserve Fund which includes measures requiring them to report on how they take into account social, environmental and ethical criteria, a law on “New Economic Regulations” requiring companies to publish social, environmental and ethical information in their annual reports.