Fund Size: £794.00m

Total screened & themed / SRI assets: £1325.00

Total Responsible Ownership assets: £1325.00

Total assets under management: £1325.00

As at: 30/06/23

Contact: sarah.briscoe@whebgroup.com

Overview

Filters

Fund information

Policy

We are an impact investor.

We consider the positive social and environmental impact of our investments as a critical part of our investment process. In doing so, we consider the impact of the products or services created by a company. We also consider how the company creates those products and services, including ESG considerations. 

Impact Criteria

The WHEB Strategy invests in companies providing solutions to sustainability challenges and we apply this principle rigorously using fixed criteria: 

• Specifically, at least one half of the company’s revenues must be derived from businesses with positive impact related to our sustainability investment themes.  Over 80% of companies in the MSCI World Index do not qualify as investments in the strategy.
• Providing solutions to sustainability challenges is, by definition, a positive impact activity. With approximately 85% of aggregate revenues coming from sustainability solutions, we are confident of the strategy’s overall impact is being strongly positive.

Process

Companies enabling the transition towards a zero carbon and more sustainable economy are more likely to experience significant structural growth. WHEB identifies high quality companies that are exposed to this transition, creating an investment universe with superior growth prospects.

ESG considerations are integrated within our bottom-up stock analysis, helping us to identify high quality companies with strong management teams, which are more likely to be able to capture profitable growth opportunities sustainably over time. A disciplined approach to valuation, alongside a longer-term perspective, prevents us from overpaying for attractive situations.

A genuine focus on solutions requires a structurally high active share, which is rare in the investment industry.  We also believe that a focus on mid-cap companies is an attractive area for active managers. It is a sweet spot for growth and avoiding the saturated coverage of large caps, but without the maturity and governance risks of earlier stage companies.

Resources, Affiliations & Corporate Strategies

WHEB’s entire business is focused on sustainable, positive impact investing. The investment team spend the vast majority of their time undertaking stock-level analysis, including ESG and sustainability assessments. We prefer to conduct this research in-house as we believe that it is too important to outsource to a third party. We do, however, utilise specialist governance research which helps inform our voting decisions that are governed by our own bespoke voting policies.

We have received the top A+ rating from the UN PRI every year that the assessment has been done. We are very involved with the likes of the IIGCC, UKSIF, FutureFit and IIRC which we believe play an increasingly important role in encouraging the development of regulations, public policy and industry standards in the area of sustainability and ESG investing.

Please see our industry networks page here: https://www.whebgroup.com/about/our-industry-networks

Dialshifter

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

WHEB Asset Management LLP’s mission is to advance sustainability and create prosperity through positive impact investments.

Impact Investment:  

We are an impact investor; which means we consider the positive social and environmental impact of our investments as a critical part of our investment process. We also measure and report the impact of our investments. When we consider impact, we consider the products or services created by the company. We also consider the way in which the company creates those products and services. This includes environmental, social and governance considerations.

Impact Criteria for the FP WHEB Sustainability Fund:  

We are the manager of the FP WHEB Sustainability Fund (“the Fund”).  The Fund invests in companies providing solutions to sustainability challenges and we apply this principle rigorously using fixed criteria:  Specifically, at least half of the company’s revenues must be derived from businesses with positive impact related to our sustainability investment themes. As a consequence, over 80% of companies in the MSCI World Index do not qualify as investments for the Fund. The provision of solutions to sustainability challenges is by definition a positive impact activity. With approximately 85% of aggregate revenues coming from sustainability solutions, we are confident that the Fund’s overall impact is strongly positive.

Ethical Outcomes

 In addition, when we analyse companies, we consider potential negative impacts associated with their products and services as well as their operations.  We only invest in companies where we are clear on the overall positive impact of the business.

As a result of this approach, we have never invested in any company with activities substantially related to the provision of: alcoholic beverages, cosmetics where animal testing has been involved, gambling products or services, fossil-fuel exploration or production, intensive farming practices, nuclear power generation, pornographic materials, tobacco products, unsustainable timber products or weapons.

We consider these products to have a significant negative impact. Companies that have significant activities in these areas would not be considered to have an overall positive impact and would therefore be ineligible for investment[i].

Our investment process actively reviews the environmental, social and governance quality of a business. Companies with persistently poor practices regarding equal employment opportunities, human rights and environmental management are highly unlikely to be selected for investment. If a company is considered particularly weak on any single metric in our fundamental analysis profile, scoring a zero, it will not be qualified for investment.

Safeguards

 Consideration of impact is central to our investment process. Our experienced Investment Team carries out all analysis of impact and environmental, social and governance factors. Additional tools that underpin and safeguard this approach include:

• A current list of the Fund’s holdings, along with a brief impact rationale for them, is always available on our website.
• Our internal Investment and Risk Committee reviews the Investment Team’s decisions on a monthly basis. Our independent Investment Advisory Committee reviews the decisions again every four months with a specific remit to consider the fund’s compliance with the stated positive impact philosophy, policies and objectives of the fund.
• The minutes of the meetings of the Investment Advisory Committee are published on the website and include a summary of the committee’s discussions of each stock purchased for the fund.

[1] We define ‘significant’ as more than 5% of revenues.

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

Consideration of climate change, both in terms of the risks and opportunities that it creates for companies held in our portfolio, has been a core part of the fund’s positioning since its inception.

The principle objective of the strategy is to invest in companies that are enabling and benefiting from the transition to a zero carbon and more sustainable economy. As a consequence, a <2 degree Celsius scenario is embedded in our investment strategy. We therefore believe the portfolio is highly aligned with an aggressive carbon reduction scenario (as, for example, set out in the IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario).

Nonetheless, each year, we attempt to improve the way we approach and integrate these issues into our investment process and fund, based on improving knowledge and tools. For example, in 2020, WHEB was delighted to become a founding signatory of the Net Zero Asset Managers[1] initiative and commit to a goal of net zero emissions from our investment portfolio by 2050 or sooner.

This initiative builds on the Net Zero Carbon 10 (NZC10) initiative that we became a member of in 2019. and also complements our own target to be a net zero carbon business by 2025, also set in 2019.

The Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative represents a very significant undertaking. In it, WHEB has committed to have at least 50% of the emissions produced by WHEB investee companies covered by net zero carbon commitments by 2025 and by 2030 to have covered by such commitments.

Critically, under the initiative we have also committed to absolute carbon emission reductions. This includes having a net zero carbon portfolio by 2050 at the latest. We have also set an interim target to achieve absolute carbon reductions by 2030 that are consistent with a 50% global reduction in carbon emissions. This 50% reduction is what is considered necessary to achieve global net zero carbon emissions goal by 2050. These commitments cover WHEB’s entire investable assets. Our Net Zero Carbon Policy covering operational emissions can be found at https://www.whebgroup.com/media/2021/02/202004-NZC-Policy-Operational-emissions.pdf  

[1] https://www.netzeroassetmanagers.org/ 

Literature

• Fund Factsheet
• Fund policy details
• Sustainability Policies

Last amended: 31/07/23 09:14