At Root Capital, we originally developed social and environmental due diligence tools and methodologies as a way to put our mission into practice and to demonstrate our impact. Years of lending led us to the realization that social and environmental due diligence brings real financial benefits as well as costs. Our issue brief describes where we see the alignment of financial, social, and environmental interests as being strongest.
Of course, Root Capital is far from the first financial institution to consider these topics. Indeed, our partners at Citibank have given these issues a lot of thought, and so we spent some time with Courtney Lowrance, Citi’s Director of Environmental and Social Risk Management, to understand their perspective and whether lessons learned from financing weather-worn farmers are relevant on Wall Street.