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Sustainable finance leader Markus Lindqvist (United Bankers, ex-Aktia) joins Upright as Senior Advisor for investor markets
Upright is excited to welcome Markus Lindqvist – a long-time customer, collaborator, and one of the most respected sustainable finance leaders in the Nordics – as our new Senior Advisor for investor markets.
Pauliina Bogdanoff
VP, Marketing & Communications, Upright
Published Dec 1, 2025·Updated May 28, 2026
Markus Lindqvist – a long-time customer, collaborator, and one of the most respected sustainable finance leaders in the Nordics – has joined Upright as Senior Advisor for investor markets.
Markus brings over 15 years of experience in sustainability and ESG development in asset management. He has held multiple significant leadership roles, currently as Investment Director at United Bankers and previously as Director, Sustainability at Aktia. He also serves as Chairman of the Board for Finsif, Finland's Sustainable Investment Forum.
To Upright, he brings the view of a long-term customer and a practitioner on the sustainability challenges facing asset managers to help us scale the use of our data for asset managers and owners.
The first encounter with Upright: a “fresh breeze” in a stale ESG landscape
Markus began looking seriously at sustainability and responsible investing before it became a defined discipline.
“Quite early on I became convinced there had to be real value in integrating sustainability into investment processes – not as a label, but as information investors actually use. It was also clear that informed decision-making would require more than ESG ratings,” Markus explains.
Markus first came across Upright while searching for better tools for ESG reporting for his institutional clients across Europe. The team hadn’t expected to find anything radically different – until Upright showed up.
Building new investment products, deeper analysis, regulatory workflows… We kept finding new applications because the model kept evolving. That’s why I’ve been a fan since day one.
“What we saw at Upright is this super tool that was way better than what we were hoping to find. It was a fresh breeze in the market, and still is. What stood out immediately was impact quantification instead of scoring and full coverage across listed and unlisted assets.”
What started as a tool to support client reporting quickly expanded.
“Building new investment products, deeper analysis, regulatory workflows… We kept finding new applications because the model kept evolving. That’s why I’ve been a fan since day one – every year Upright strengthens its methodology, expands its coverage, and builds entirely new use cases.”
And now, with the next wave of AI powering even more advanced analysis, Markus sees a step-change coming.
Market outlook: polarised discourse, rising risks, and a growing need for reliable data
Markus sees a clear split between the political noise around ESG and the realities investors must navigate.
“The debate is polarised, but the underlying risks are facts,” he says. “Climate, biodiversity, and other material sustainability factors are only becoming more severe – and investors need to understand them to invest well, regardless of any EU directive.”
For him, the real bottleneck is consistent, comparable data, especially beyond listed markets.
“In every ESG panel, people say the same thing: we need better data. The gap is widest in private and unlisted markets, and that’s where Upright’s full-coverage model is genuinely transformative.”
His advice for investors is: ignore the politics around the right ESG terminology and prioritise the information that actually supports decisions.
“Set aside the noise. Look at the real impacts, risks, and opportunities related to the companies you invest in to make informed decisions.”
Asset manager, need better sustainability data?
Read more about how Upright's products- and services-based impact data for asset managers below.
Pauliina Bogdanoff
VP, Marketing & Communications, Upright
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