Fund Filters

Fund management company information

Sustainable, Responsible &/or ESG Policy:

Our fund research comprises both due diligence of a funds’ investment process and policies, as well as a detailed review (and ongoing monitoring) of all underlying holdings and reporting. This is necessary to ensure the Positive Impact Portfolios meet their mandate of maximising positive impacts (and avoiding harm as a natural by-product).

Positive screen: Solution providers

The process really starts with the search for companies whose products and services will make a material positive impact on solving societal and environmental problems. We are using the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) as a framework to focus on the key issues that need to be tackled. Launched following the 2015 UN Summit in Paris, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals address the issues the UN sees as most challenging to our world between now and 2030.

We ensure that the investment process and philosophy of funds reflects a focus on selecting companies with a material and additional positive impact case. Additionally, we have developed our EQ SDG X-ray tool that allows us to analyse every underlying holding in regards to contributing solutions to the UN SDGs.

Negative screen:

It is also important to screen out the most controversial sectors such as tobacco, armaments, gambling or pornography. Firstly, we review the screening policies applied by the fund’s investment process. Additionally, at EQ Investors, we have developed a proprietary tool that allows us to map all underlying holdings to negative effect on the UN SDGs. This process includes all traditional ethical controversial products/activity involvements but goes further. For example, it allows us to flag fossil fuel exposure, unhealthy nutrition, air freight or automotive pollution. This allows us to be transparent and avoid exposure to harmful sectors.

Balance:

While our focus remains on selecting companies with products and service that show a material and additional positive impact, it is also important to look at the operations of the firms to assure these are also responsibly managed. We assure ESG integration to the fund investment process and have access to ESG data in-house to tests fund managers on their rationales. This will allow us to maximise exposure to net-positive impact companies om balance.

Engagement:

As a result of this screening process, some of the Sustainable Development Goals align with significant investment opportunities for the Positive Impact Portfolios such as good health and well-being or affordable and clean energy while others do not represent realistic investment opportunities at all. We will engage with fund managers to also create positive Impacts on those UN SDG that are less readily investable, and better targeted through responsible company operations.

We also engage on an ongoing basis to test fund manager adherence to process, flag any controversies, and push for evolution with best-practice.

Impact measurement:

Impact measurement is a key prerequisite to ‘impact investing’ definitions.

To measure the impact achieved by the portfolios, we have produced an impact report that details how the companies we invest in align to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

For 2 years we have also uniquely measured the impact generated by an investment in the EQ Positive Impact portfolios on number of social and environmental key performance indicators. We provide personalised impact reports via our online ‘impact calculator’.

Green bond exposure is around 5% for a Balanced risk profile, 10% for a more cautious portfolio and under 3% for a more adventurous portfolio.

Process

Alongside a thorough financial analysis, the due diligence process is complemented with an equally detailed analysis of the ESG integration process, sustainability screens and the application of impact investing best-practices within the underlying funds. This is where we add significant value through our 10 years’ experience in evaluating sustainable investments. Given the quickly growing fund universe, there is increasing vagueness in terminology, and a related increase in “greenwash risk”.

Please request full process document for all details.

Resources, Affiliations & Corporate Strategies

EQ Investors and its employees have been involved in impact investing since 2008, and this experience led us to the creation of the Positive Impact Portfolios in 2012, with the objective of making impact investing available to mainstream investors.

Since then, EQ Investors has built out its sustainable investing capabilities. We launched the EQ Future Leaders MPS range in early 2020, a passive sustainable proposition. We also offer bespoke sustainable investment services tailored to specific client sustainability and financial objectives.

We are a team of 14, comprising:

• 4 full time investment analysts with different sector coverage
• 2 full time analyst covering sustainability due diligence, monitoring, engagement, impact measurement
• 2 portfolio managers, heading impact and macro research too
• 3 investment managers
• 1 director involved in strategic investment decisions
• 2 client support and product specialists
• Additionally, we are supported by operations and platform administration team (4 people) and an internal IT team (4 people).

All the fund and asset allocation research is carried out internally, but we have access to external data providers to provide research data input.

Given that EQ is a sustainable investment manager, our sustainable investment approach is fully integrated across our research process to avoid over-reliance on key individuals. Therefore all members carry out relevant aspects of sustainability research, integration or engagement. In addition, all EQ fund analysts need to complete the CFA ESG in 2023 and are actively contributing to the ESG assessment, fund monitoring and implementing the sustainability objectives of our portfolios.

A dedicated Board Report is produced that summarises key innovations, proposes changes and keeps the bridge between implementation and oversight. Each other committee (Asset allocation, fund selection, risk) includes the relevant aspects of sustainability objectives into their agenda and responsibilities. E.g. climate integration into asset allocation, monitoring the meeting of minimum sustainability standards in risk.

Affiliations:

UN PRI, CA100+, ShareAction, Access to nutrition, World Benchmarking Alliance, TCFD, TNFD

Dialshifter

This portfolio is helping to ‘shift the dial from brown to green’ by…

The EQ Positive Impact Portfolios have been designed with a view to support companies that are developing innovative solutions to tackle the largest issues the world is facing including climate change. By supporting the issuance of green bonds, financing of low carbon solutions as well as engaging with companies to push them to reduce their carbon emissions, the EQ Positive Impact Portfolios are sharing the ethos of the Dialshifter to make the fight against climate change a high priority for all stakeholders.

Our organisation is helping to support the Paris Climate Agreement and the Race to Net Zero by…

Being a signatory of the B Corp Climate Collective NetZero 2030 initiative, EQ Investors has committed to net zero emissions by 2030. EQ wants to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to reach a 1.5-degree trajectory leading to net zero by the year 2030—20 years ahead of the 2050 targets set in the Paris Agreement.

EQ Investors has also joined the influential Climate Action 100+ group of investors. The initiative is aimed at pushing the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters to take action on climate change.