Andy MacFarlane: The three terms—sustainability; ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance); and climate—get used interchangeably; and before we start this discussion it’s worth defining what we mean by sustainability, what we mean by ESG and how they link together.

I see sustainability as the framework, the vision for thinking about the future and ESG as representing the factors that are balanced as we look to develop and improve our quality of life. Having established this we can then examine each component the E, the S and the G as a company to understand what it means for us and how we look to achieve sustainability.

In terms of what has driven sustainability to prominence, there has been a growing interest in sustainability from consumers and leaders around the world, which has resulted in tangible targets and goals being set, such as the United Nations Sustainability Goals.

People want companies to act. Companies are being forced to think beyond profits and more about purpose.

Ralf Kuerzdoerfer: There is a growing assumption that performance on the ESG side translates into better financial performance or at least a more sustainable business model. But for a company to truly change, all stakeholders have to be on board, including employees.

Ariane West: The idea of companies managing themselves with a view to their overall social and economic impact, as opposed to existing only to deliver profits or “shareholder value”, has been around for many decades. The doctrine of primacy of “shareholder value” versus seeing companies as accountable to all stakeholders are competing philosophies.

We may be finally seeing a long overdue shift to the former, which is something new particularly in markets outside of Europe. We think it boils down to the idea that what is more sustainable in terms of growth will also be more profitable over the longer term, and this is increasingly becoming the consensus view.

Myra Virgil: As much as we can discuss governance structures and the global movement, ultimately, we live in the places we work. Everything we do we also do for our employees and their and our families. It’s not a side issue: it’s integrated; it’s core to what we do. The issue has gone way past corporate social responsibility now; the next generation are saying: “you have to do this”.

Michael Neff: When we looked at this issue, we realised we were already doing a whole series of things that would fall under ESG. The real journey now is transitioning to those being core to how you conduct business. It can’t be a project on the side, it has to be the way the company operates. Then you have to articulate that, measure it and manage it.

In some respects, people have been doing this for a while. In other respects, coalescing and ingraining it into day-to-day practices, is a new step.

Kathleen Faries: I love that we started with the concept of what it means and why? In Europe, they’ve been talking about this for a long time, but the why can get lost or be hard to find. It seems to me the why is around how companies can make a profit and also contribute to making a better world.

Bermuda specifically has been focused on the climate aspect of ESG. But there’s so much more to it. There are the principles of governance, the environmental, the human capital, the prosperity aspects, which should get companies thinking about their local community, about what they are doing to contribute to a better life for everybody.

Some companies are going to be able to make specific contributions because of their expertise or because of their stakeholders, but not everybody will be able to do all the things perfectly. That means the idea of our collaborating while not losing sight of the why is great. Avoiding a check-the-box mindset is important.

MacFarlane: It’s about profit and purpose. You could argue that insurance has been doing social good since it was established. As an industry, that’s what we’ve been doing for some time: making people and communities whole again after significant events such as natural catastrophes. Insurance at its core, has a very strong ESG component. But you can’t sell insurance alone as ESG, that wouldn’t be accepted.

Andrew Smith: ESG has come to the forefront driven by a realisation of the environmental side of things. That is something all stakeholders, investors, customers, employees, the community, can coalesce behind as a concept. Yet when you start to unpick the concept, you quite quickly realise you can’t do anything meaningful on the environmental side unless you start to deal with inequalities.

How can undeveloped countries deal with the environmental without resources? So the conversation moves to linking the E and the S.

Once you then think about funds flowing around the world, the G part starts being important as well, from a multinational level to individual communities and companies. It’s about where you can have the most impact, whether that’s on the environment, or on social issues, and how best to apply the resources you have.

That tension between shareholder value and social good has become dissipated because actually the two things are aligned. For me, that is why ESG is more commonly being talked about as a broad, integrated discussion.

Neff: It’s more than just a corporate conversation. When we talk about climate risk finance every stakeholder we met asks: what is the government of Bermuda doing? How do you create alignment between the government and the companies? That’s a whole other layer of this conversation.

West: The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals were originally the Millennium Development Goals developed by the European Commission in the 1990s, so this conversation has been happening for decades. When you look at those goals, they cover the E, the S and G, and the need for them to be integrated. But I agree that companies cannot do this by themselves, nor can governments impose all the necessary changes, nor can communities and individuals on their own bring about change on the scale required.

Integration is needed across all three pillars, and meaningful action at each level of society: government, the private sector and on the ground in the community and at the household level. Being optimistic, it is finally happening. The false dichotomy of shareholder value and profit versus “doing good”—there’s a realisation that all these pieces need to work together.

Kimberly Rafuse: I am relatively new to Bermuda, but the coalescence of ESG within the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) has been years in the making. There has been a number of steps along the way in terms of questionnaires and reaching out to stakeholders. To be honest, it has been a journey and we are working on outreach to bring our stakeholders together, to report on this and to educate each other.

It is a new position for me but not a new focus area for the BMA. Other individuals have had this as part of their job for some time. I hope to bring extra focus and energy to the role. It is something I am passionate about. For Bermuda, as an island state, it is especially important. We can feel the environment changing here and, of course, the insurance industry understands catastrophes. It is a really exciting time to be here.

William Curry: I’ve been close to the heart of this issue for decades. I feel like a tarnished penny. I’ve been around for a long time trying to fight climate change, pointing out this is a problem. It is a slow motion problem though, which makes it hard to deal with.

I would stress that this is bigger than corporations, bigger than governments. Remember, some governments are actively fighting it. There’s a political fight going on about the E part of ESG. Governments have their own ideas about what’s important.

To me, ESG, comes across somewhat like a buzzword, but it has improved our funding because part of our outreach in training and education is around environmental science. So we’re a beneficiary. Yet I don’t see a whole lot of movement globally around climate mitigation.

We’re a small organisation with a big footprint in climate research and connections globally with the scientific community. We’ve been doing it a long time and that’s an advantage for Bermuda corporations. We can help companies connect with the best experts globally.

The work we do is routine in the sense that we’re constantly measuring the ocean and watching it change very slowly. It’s very slowly warming, getting saltier and losing oxygen.

That work doesn’t affect anything you’re doing in any immediate sense. But our programmes helped get the Risk Prediction Initiative off the ground and informed a lot of the changes in the way the risk industry views catastrophe for hurricanes.

A lot of your employees were students of those programmes. Now, we’re starting to hear people asking us about certifications for climate risk. Things like that will develop and grow on-Island.

Bermuda might end up being ultimately at the forefront of things such as using the ocean for carbon dioxide reduction. We’re getting to the point where it’s very clear that simply cutting back on burning fossil fuels isn’t working. We’re at the level where to have a substantive effect we’re going to have to start removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Neff: There’s a groundswell of passion around this topic in the next generation. They want it addressed in a full frontal way. And to your point, it’s not just mitigation of emissions, whole new technologies are needed that literally consume carbon dioxide. There are millions of kids who are going to be very focused on this.

Virgil: ESG has been at risk of becoming something that feels conceptual and not real. But that can’t be true because we’re all fighting for land that’s eroding and breathing air that is becoming more polluted. The younger generation gets it. After ESG comes climate justice as a social justice issue because the impacts are not fair for everyone.

MacFarlane: It is the need to make sure that any change in society is equitable between countries and populations. I think that is going to be essential. The research coming from Bermuda goes into climate models, views of risks, the evolution of how we see hazards. That’s a huge part of what we as an industry do.

We run our business on a three-year time horizon, maximum five-year time horizon. Yet it will be decades before we see the real impacts of climate change.

Curry: We send off data to data centres in the US that are accessible by every meteorological organisation in every country. It’s completely available. When a hurricane is coming along, the reason they are able to make certain predictions about is because they know what the ocean temperature is in front of it.

Back 20 years ago, they didn’t know, and that’s a big change. There are robotics all over the ocean sending back measurements all the time; there’s a tremendous data stream coming in. We are a small part of that global effort. But Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) did start earlier than everyone else. That means we have the data on long-term changes.

I just turned 70. BIOS started its time series measurements 68 years ago. That’s the longest on the planet.

Theodore Potgieter: Climate science data is important in terms of educating people on the urgency of the change that is required. We have seen that companies are now realising the urgency to change; however, they are still considering/grappling with how to do this most effectively.

We have seen companies either making commitments to sustainability frameworks which remain largely unregulated and voluntary at present, or waiting for regulation and government policy to provide guidance before significantly changing their way of operating. Data remains essential to helping us understand that the clock is ticking.

Curry: I assume many of the companies represented in Bermuda make political donations. You should figure out who you make political donations to. If you’re trying to do ESG you don’t to want to be giving donations to people who want to burn fossil fuels.

Smith: That’s the G part of the ESG.

West: You could also flip it and question whether corporations should have the ability to exert outsized influence on government policy via financial donations to political campaigns.