Sustainable, Responsible &/or ESG Policy:

Objectives and Investment Policy

The Share Class is a share class of a Fund which aims to achieve a return on your investment, through a combination of capital growth and income on the Fund’s assets, which reflects the return of the iBoxx MSCI ESG GBP Liquid Investment Grade Ultrashort Index, the Fund’s benchmark index (Index).

The Share Class, via the Fund is passively managed and aims to invest so far as possible and practicable in the fixed income (FI) securities (such as bonds) that make up the Index and comply with its credit rating requirements.

The Index measures the performance of Sterling denominated, investment grade, ultrashort FI securities (including corporate bonds, quasi-sovereign bonds, subsovereign bonds and covered bonds) which are part of the iBoxx GBP Liquid Investment Grade Ultrashort Index (Parent Index). To be eligible for inclusion in the Index, the FI securities must have a time to maturity, at issuance, of at least one year, and at the time of their inclusion in the Index, a remaining time to maturity of less than or equal to one year for fixed coupon rate bonds and less than or equal to three years for floating rate notes.

The Index excludes companies from the Parent Index which are identified by the index provider as being involved in controversial, conventional or nuclear weapons, civilian firearms, tobacco, adult entertainment, alcohol, gambling, nuclear power, genetically modified organisms, oil sands, thermal coal, unconventional oil and gas and fossil fuel. The index provider defines what constitutes “involvement” in each restricted activity which may be by reference to specific revenue thresholds or by any connection to an activity.

The Index also excludes companies based on their involvement in major ESG controversies or which have an MSCI ESG rating below BBB.

The Fund may obtain limited exposure to securities (including through financial derivative instruments (FDIs) (i.e. investments the prices of which are based on one or more underlying assets) and units in collective investment schemes) considered not to satisfy these ESG criteria.

The Fund adopts a best-in-class approach to sustainable investing, meaning it is expected to invest in the best issuers from an ESG perspective (based on the ESG criteria of the Index) within each relevant sector of activities covered by the Index.

The Index is market capitalisation weighted (with a cap on each issuer of 4%). Market capitalisation is the market value of the outstanding bond issuance.

The Fund's investment in FI securities will, at the time of purchase, comply with the credit rating and ESG requirements of the Index. Where securities no longer meet such requirements, the Fund may continue to hold them until they cease to form part of the Index and it is practicable to sell them.

The Fund uses optimising techniques to achieve a similar return to its Index. These may include the strategic selection of certain securities that make up the Index or other FI securities which provide similar performance to certain constituent securities. These may also include the use of FDIs. FDIs may be used for direct investment purposes.

(Source: KIID, as at February 2025)

 

SDR Labelling:

Not eligible to use label