Fidelity International launches 'Sustainable Family of Funds' ESG range
Fidelity International today announced the launch of its Sustainable Family of Funds (the Sustainable Family), a new cross-asset class fund range with a focused environmental, social and governance (ESG) framework.
The Sustainable Family will offer two investment categories, best-in-class and sustainable thematic. The best-in-class funds will actively seek to select companies that are high ESG performers relative to peers, while the sustainable thematic funds will use an investment approach that contributes to addressing sustainability challenges or creating a positive value-add to society and the environment.
The Sustainable Family will consist of five products; including water and waste and carbon reduction sustainable thematic strategies as well as three best-in-class equity and fixed income funds.
ESG has long been integrated throughout our investment process and the Sustainable Family marks the next step in our evolving approach"
The Sustainable Family's investment approach is underpinned by three pillars, centred around engagement, exclusion, and Fidelity's proprietary research. This combines Fidelity's focus on active engagement with an enhanced exclusion framework with the aim to ensure companies in which the funds invest meet certain sustainable standards and behave in a manner consistent with responsible investment values.
The Sustainable Family benefits from Fidelity's rigorous bottom-up research process, which leverages the unique insights of more than 180 research analysts together with the expertise of Fidelity's specialist ESG team. This research includes Fidelity's newly launched proprietary sustainability ratings, which divides the investment universe into 99 subsectors, each with industry-specific criteria against which the issuer is assessed relative to its peers, using an A to E rating.
Jenn-Hui Tan, global head of stewardship and sustainable investing at Fidelity International, commented: "As responsible investors, we believe that by investing in companies which operate with high standards of sustainability we can protect and enhance investment returns for our clients. ESG has long been integrated throughout our investment process and the Sustainable Family marks the next step in our evolving approach to sustainable investing in order to meet the growing demands of our clients around the world.
"Our deep corporate access gives us the opportunity to form a forward-looking view of the factors impacting a company's ESG performance. This was recently enhanced with the launch of our proprietary sustainability ratings, which will greatly enhance our portfolio managers' decision-making process and help us to focus on delivering long-term sustainable outcomes for investors."
The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up so you may get back less than you invest. The Investment Manager's focus on securities of companies which maintain strong environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials may result in a return that at times compares unfavourably to similar products without such focus.
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