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 Refinitiv Global Large/Mid Diversity & Inclusion ex Controversial Weapons Equal Weight 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 equity securities (e.g. shares) that make up the Index.

The Index measures the performance of a subset of global equity securities of publicly traded companies included in the Refinitiv Global ex Frontier Large/Mid Cap Index (Parent Index) which are not involved in the production of controversial weapons and also meet the index provider’s series of diversity and inclusion criteria based on the Refinitiv Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) database. The Parent Index is market capitalised weighted and comprises the top 85% market capitalised weighted global equity securities of publicly traded companies, excluding companies based in frontier markets, as determined by the index provider.

In order for a company to be eligible for the Index it must be: (1) within the Parent Index and not identified by the index provider as being involved in the manufacture or production of cluster bombs, anti-personnel landmines or whose armament revenues exceed $500m or 5% of net revenues (the “Controversial Weapons Screen”), (2) included in the ESG database, which comprises publicly available information, (3) then measured and scored against a subset of the index provider’s metrics, applied to the index provider’s ESG database, based on each company’s ability to demonstrate policies and principles of four concepts (the “D&I Score”): (i) diversity (e.g. gender and cultural representation in workforce and on boards of directors), (ii) inclusion (e.g. flexible working and accommodation of employees with disabilities or critical illness), (iii) people development (e.g. employee development, training, satisfaction and internal promotion), and (iv) controversies reported (e.g. regarding diversity, equal opportunities, wages and working conditions). The final D&I Score for each company is the simple average of the four pillar scores (each of the four pillars must be greater than zero for a company to be eligible for the Index). The companies are then ranked in descending order by their D&I Score and approximately 100 companies with the best D&I Scores are eligible for the Index. Companies without a D&I Score are excluded from the Index. The Fund will take into account such ESG criteria only when selecting the securities to be held directly directly by the Fund. The Fund may obtain indirect exposure (through, including but not limited to, 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) to securities considered not to satisfy these ESG criteria.

More than 90% of the developed markets issuers, and 75% of emerging market issuers, of securities the Fund invests in, excluding cash and money market funds, are ESG rated or have been analysed for ESG purposes. The weighted average ESG rating of the Fund will be higher than the Parent Index.

In respect of rebalancing the Index, existing constituents of the Index that meet the Controversial Weapons Screen and maintain a D&I Score at or above the D&I Score of the 110th ranked constituent are retained in the Index by the index provider. New constituents that meet the Controversial Weapons Screen and have a D&I Score at or above the D&I Score of the 90th ranked constituent are eligible for the Index. The Index aims to hold approximately 100 companies. Each of the Index constituents are equally weighted.

(Source: KIID, as at February 2025

 

SDR Labelling:

Not eligible to use label