M&G has appointed Kathy Ryan as chief sustainability officer to lead the group’s strategy and be responsible for embedding sustainability across the business and responsible investment.
She joins on November 13 and reports to chief financial officer Kathryn McLeland.
Ryan joins from Irish Life Investment Management, the largest manager of life assurance and pension assets in Ireland, where she was head of responsible investment and built a team of ESG specialists to lead integration and stewardship across asset classes.
She also chaired the CDP Ireland Network, launched the 30% Investor Initiative Ireland on Diversity and contributed to Ireland’s Climate Action Plan.
Prior to ILIM, Ryan was a senior product strategist at Aviva focused on ESG integration. Her experience also includes sustainable fund structuring and climate risk methodologies at independent sustainability consultancy Global Green Investments, which she founded in 2013.
She advised clients such as the World Bank to structure funds to attract private capital for utility-scale renewable energy projects and also worked on green bond development with European Commission.
Ryan also worked at Carbon Tracker and the UN Principles for Responsible Investment to develop a climate risk methodology to assess the financial risk of energy transition in the fossil fuel sector.
M&G's investment business had £332.8bn of assets under management and administration as of June 30.