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SUSTAINABILITY is a key commitment for many financial firms, both locally and further afield.
Sustainability has also been a key focus of Russell Waite’s recent career, and he has seen first-hand how the topic has evolved over the years.
Russell is an investment director at Capital International (Jersey) Ltd, part of the Capital International Group (Capital International).
He joined Capital International following its acquisition of APW Investors, formerly Affinity Private Wealth’s investment arm, in a move which he says will strengthen the focus on sustainable finance.
“Capital International is a relatively new financial services business to the Island,” said Russell.
“It is headquartered and has long been established in the Isle of Man and as
well as operating in Jersey, it has offices in South Africa, and it was recently
awarded its licence to operate out of Dubai.”
Before joining Capital International, Russell spent a number of years at Affinity Private Wealth.
“I was a founder and head of sustainability. The business had two licences – a trust company licence and an investment business licence. I sat in the investment business, and we were dedicated to managing assets responsibly and sustainably,” he explained.
This was a driver, Russell noted, of Capital International’s purchase of the investment arm of Affinity Private Wealth earlier this year.
“Part of the rationale supporting the transaction was a clear alignment of culture and values,” he added.
Sustainable finance has been an interest of Russell’s for quite some time, he says.
“The idea of climate change or global warming has been around for many years. I think scientists were first talking about global warming 100 years ago,” he said. “Through school years and geography classes, I got a bit of insight into climate change and its dangers.”
He recalled how that interest had morphed into a focus of his professional career in the late-90s and early-2000s, when China was going through “extraordinary industrialisation”.
“China’s thirst for resources like coal, oil, copper and iron ore was enormous,” said Russell. “I had the reflection that if all the developing nations around the world were industrialising at that rate, or aspired to industrialise like China, then there simply weren’t enough planet Earths to accommodate that demand for resources.”
It was this that led Russell to think about what impact these global events would have economically, and how this would influence capital markets. Then, the 2015 Paris Agreement was signed, which only solidified his belief that there were opportunities in this area.
“Nations of the world signing up and agreeing to reduce emissions further stoked not just my interest but also that of investors, because a lot of capital started to flood into businesses that were delivering services that helped to mitigate the impact of climate change,” he recalled.
“It sparked an interest from us professionally in catering for those clients, wanting to take advantage of these investment opportunities.”
Over the past few years, Russell has been witness to the fast evolution of the sustainable finance space.
“The Paris Agreement was a real catalyst for capital flowing in. It was available to support a lot of ventures, whether they were in the renewable energy space, natural capital space or addressing biodiversity issues, which was all very good and very positive for those investors,” he shared.
“There was a real idealism that investors could allocate this capital, make a positive impact and also generate attractive investment returns over time.”
More recently, Russell advised that the global macroeconomic environment had changed, and so had the sustainable finance industry.
“As inflation was rising post-Covid, policy-makers raised interest rates, creating a more challenging situation for investors in longer duration assets, like utilities or renewables generating electricity from solar or wind,” he explained. “Those investments became much less attractive and re-rated sharply lower.”
Russell also highlighted a shift in attitudes that had contributed to this change.
“There was a real re-evaluation point there, and this coincided with growing societal pushback around investing in all things green. It’s very topical, even today, that the green levy associated with electricity generation has resulted in the UK, for example, having one of the most expensive tariffs for electricity in the world,” he said.
And Trump’s influence on these attitudes cannot be ignored.
“Alongside this, of course, was ever louder anti-ESG rhetoric, which has been centred in the US, particularly under the new administration,” Russell said. “A consequence of all these things is that the sustainable investment space has been forced to undergo a shift from idealism to realism.”
Part of this transition is the knowledge that the system changes required are not going to be achieved in two or three years, Russell argues, saying that they are decades away.
He poses the questions, “how do you go about measuring that impact?” and “how do we demonstrate that we have hit net zero?”.
“Led by the European Union, there was a huge amount of work undertaken around developing a taxonomy or means by which data could be collected, measured, analysed and impact demonstrated. There are a lot of metrics that need to be assessed and verified to demonstrate that net zero has been achieved,” said Russell.
The focus on these metrics and how these should be calibrated and monitored resulted, he said, in the sustainable finance ecosystem losing focus over what matters.
“I think the sustainable finance industry became so focused on the complexity of those metrics that it lost sight of what it was trying to do,” Russell added.
Now, he says there has been another change in attitude, but one that is “more realistic” when it comes to collecting and measuring those metrics, enabling businesses to succeed and goals to be achieved.
“Despite the maelstrom of negative news flow, below the surface, there are a lot of companies doing great things in terms of how they run themselves as businesses, but also the products and services they are delivering to help mitigate all the issues that sustainable investors are wanting to ensure can be improved,” he added.
Russell said that women were increasingly controlling or creating wealth, and they are interested in sustainable finance, particularly “seeing their capital invested responsibly”.
Russell and his team have now entered a new chapter as the “newcomers” to Capital International.
Newcomers they may be, but he believes the culture and values established at Affinity were – and continue to be – aligned with Capital International, with both firms committed to their broader stakeholders.
“When any company is formed, there’s a recognition that its shareholders and clients are very important. Stakeholder capitalism extends this to other important stakeholders, including its employees, the communities in which it operates, suppliers and, where applicable, the regulator,” Russell explained.
“That stakeholder mindset at Affinity is very aligned with how Capital International runs its business, and when it became interested in buying the investment arm of Affinity, this alignment became apparent very quickly.”
It proved to be a “real accelerant” in the acquisition of Affinity, which completed on 30 September 2025.
Capital International’s sustainability manifesto, Conscious Capital, only further confirmed to Russell that the teams were “two peas in the same pod”.
He explains Conscious Capital as an “ambition to be net-positive” in terms of sustainable value creation for all stakeholders, and this is built around four key themes.
“The first is ‘investing capital responsibly’ on behalf of our clients. We are signatories to the United Nations’ Principles of Responsible Investing, which is at the core of our investment approach.
“Second is financial wellbeing. Clients entrust Capital International to advise on their assets, and the mandate they give us to manage their wealth and fulfil their financial objectives is a responsibility we take very seriously,” he said.
Russell added that financial wellbeing also related to how the business itself was run and administered, ensuring it was profitable and building prosperity for its stakeholders.
The third pillar focuses on commitments outside the office, he says, and looks at making a positive impact on the communities in which it operates.
“Locally, Capital International sponsors Jersey hockey,” Russell shared, “and colleagues in the Isle of Man and the South African office have supported an orphanage in Tanzania for the past four years, building the infrastructure and making them self-sustained.”
The fourth and final pillar relates to mitigating the impact of climate change, whether that is mobilising capital for its clients or reducing the business’s emissions footprint.
“There’s a common phrase in the corporate space that ‘what gets measured, gets done’, so considering these ambitions, how do we measure whether we’re achieving those?” Russell said.
“The World Economic Forum has a set of common metrics of sustainable value creation and these are centred around people, planet, prosperity and governance.”
Russell emphasised that critical governance was central to Capital International business.
“We work in the financial services industry. Governance is the backbone of trust, and being trustworthy in the financial services sector is vitally important for us,” he said.
“That, in combination with the rest of the pillars, is encapsulated in Conscious Capital.”
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speaker and do not constitute investment advice or a recommendation. Capital International (Jersey) Ltd is regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Commission.
Listen…
Hear more from Russell in the latest Bailiwick Podcast episode by visiting bailiwickexpress.transistor.fm/episodes.
