Insights
Encouraging Positive Sustainability Alignment in the Securitized Market
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Insight Article
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October 25, 2024
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October 25, 2024
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Encouraging Positive Sustainability Alignment in the Securitized Market |
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Our team believes that Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations are an essential component to investing in securitized markets, and that a thoughtful ESG integration approach can result in better performance and encourage positive outcomes for the environment and society. Recognizing the securitized market’s lack of high quality and consistent ESG data, such as carbon emissions data, that may be more prevalent in other asset classes, in 2018 we became one of the first asset managers to develop a proprietary sustainability ESG rating framework. Given the success we have had with our global approach to securitized investing and our ESG rating framework, we recently launched a more ESG-targeted Global Asset Backed Securities Focused Fund (‘the Fund’) in January 2024 that leverages this framework to implement its three primary aspects of ESG integration, depicted in Display 1.
While many existing ESG-oriented securitized investment funds focus on just one ESG characteristic (i.e. environmental or social), the Fund invests across all sectors and geographies and considers environmental, social and governance implications for each deal. As an Article 8 Fund, it is recognized by the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation “SFDR” (please see the Fund’s website disclosure) as a product that promotes environmental or social characteristics and is bound to integrate sustainability into its investment process.
Our “Best-in-Class” ESG screening, a core aspect in the Fund’s security selection process, is based on three key steps, as presented in Display 2:
We view most residential, commercial and consumer lending to have a neutral ESG profile, which translates to average ESG scores of 3 across our investment universe. We take a conservative approach in this regard, by assigning a score of 3 to standard responsible lending practices, with the thesis that responsible lending should be interpreted as a baseline, while scores of 4 or 5 are reserved for lending practices and/or assets and loans with outsized positive environmental or social characteristics. This is the case, for example, with buildings that have particularly robust LEED certifications (e.g. Gold or above, or equivalent), which would be associated with a score of 4.
The Fund only invests in securitizations that it considers to be best-in-class on ESG matters, which translates to ESG scores of 3, 4, or 5 within our Framework. By doing so, the Fund maintains a tilt towards positive sustainability-aligned investments, and excludes any securitizations linked to negative factors such as severe breaches of consumer protection standards and fraud.
Conclusion
Putting these steps all together, our ESG evaluation of each of the Fund’s investments is robust and comprehensive, as exemplified by the ABS deal presented in Display 5. Overall, we believe the Fund presents a compelling investment opportunity given its unique ESG-focused securitized offering, attractive risk- adjusted yields and strong total return potential. Our research-driven approach provides a flexible architecture to the integration of ESG factors into the investment process which we continue to evolve and enhance with the aim of maximizing financial returns for our clients while contributing to positive sustainability outcomes.
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Global Head of Fixed Income ESG Strategy & Research
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Vice President
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