Robert Rubinstein, member of Advisory Council of Wealth and Society, expresses his congratulations on the award participants and expectations on the practices of ESG in the financial sector.

The following is the edited transcript of the full interview:

Greetings to all of you from Amsterdam. And congratulations to the Wealth & Society group for putting on another fabulous awards event, I want to thank the organisation, I also want to thank everyone who applied to be a winner this year, whether you won or that you didn't, the applications were spectacular. You put in a lot of effort, also for the team, actually processing all the applications. But you could see very clearly that it was important to you and us, that you wanted to win and you wanted to do better. And I anticipate next year's application will be even broader, more applications, and even more thought put in to do a better job next year.

It's very clear, particularly with Glasgow and COP 26, that climate is now a cost. And it's a cost for the corporate sector, a cost for society. It's a cost definitely for the environment, but also it will be a cost for the financial sector, the financial sector is starting to realise that if they want to prosper, succeed and grow, embracing sustainability, ESG impact will be absolutely critical to their attracting the best and the brightest for staffing, for capturing all the risks involved in an organization and analysing an organisation, looking at the environmental, social and governance.

But it's become really clear that people see this now as an important profit centre, that if you are an ESG champion, that means you're very resource efficient, you use very little water, raw materials, wast and energy. And you actually don't have to spend that much on fines because you're doing a great job of managing these resources. In addition, you don't spend as much money on attracting the best and the brightest, because people want to come to you. And they stay with you longer. So this profit centre is becoming clearer. Sustainability is becoming even more clear. I think it's going to be a boom period for Asia in trying to integrate ESG and impact in the way that you need to integrate it in your organisation, which will impact the applications next year, because people will see there is absolutely a lot of product development opportunities, risk analysis, and also attracting new clients who will be looking for the financial sector that can provide those type of services.

So great opportunity for all those that won this year. Congratulations. You did a great job. And let's hope next year that more people apply and that there is an even better batch of winners next year. Thank you again. I'm so sorry. I couldn't be with you this year. And I hope next year to be able to join you along with Wealth & Society and their team. They did a fantastic job. Give them a round of applause before this, thank you, and I hope to see you next year.