Impact reporting commences
The collation of our annual Impact Reports for our clients’ portfolios is underway. At AIM, transparency and reporting on impact is a crucial step in our investment process.
This year we are continuing to develop and enhance our impact reporting capability, building on previous initiatives. For example, we will be developing funded projects net-zero scenario alignment reporting, working with ISS who we also partner with in our calculation of portfolio Carbon Yield.
We continue to enhance our reporting as regulation evolves on sustainability disclosure around the world. We will start to incorporate metrics from the EU Sustainable Finance Regulation (“SFDR”) into our reporting this year. We have been actively involved in providing investor feedback for the EU Taxonomy and continue to review of our verification process and policies annually to maintain best-practice and stay abreast of market developments.
SFDR came into effect in March 2021 and requires asset managers to disclose the level of sustainability integration and focus of each investment strategy they manage. All our European vehicles are classified under Article 9, the highest possible sustainability classification. While we are not required to report on SFDR metrics until 2023, we will begin to incorporate metrics in our impact reporting, across all portfolios, in 2022.
This year we will continue to report on the Weighted Average Carbon Intensity (“WACI”) of our portfolios and benchmarks, where relevant. This year we refined our methodology and will be calculating separate WACIs for sovereigns and corporates. Given the methodological differences for assigning greenhouse gas emissions intensity for these two different types of issuers, we believe this to be a more robust and accurate methodology.
We expect to publish our annual Impact Reports for our portfolios in July and August.
We continue to actively engage with a wide range of stakeholders. We are currently conducting a thematic engagement on issuers’ net zero commitments to understand the range of practices which are being implemented across different sectors. From this, we intend to gain sector specific insights from the target setting process, clarity on methodologies and definitions being used and the structure of reporting against these targets.
Each engagement will take the form of a semi-structured interview, with a core set of questions that will be adapted to the issuer in question. For our engagements, we have chosen issuers who have made decarbonisation commitments and have a robust strategy in place to achieve these. The aim of our thematic engagement is to both enhance our analysis of net-zero commitments within our verification process and to provide feedback on net-zero strategies to increase transparency and robustness in issuer targets.
AIM wins at the ESG Investing Awards 2022
We are delighted to announce that we have once again been recognised at the ESG Investing Awards. This year we won the award for ‘Best ESG Investment Fund: Fixed Income’ for the LO Funds – Global Climate Bond, which we manage on behalf of Lombard Odier, and were a runner-up for ‘Best ESG Investment Fund: Specialist Fixed Income’ for the AIM US$ Liquid Impact Fund, our short duration offering.
The ESG Investing Awards 2022 celebrate the best in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) research, ratings, products and sustainability. The awards are the only ones devoted to assessing and evaluating the best companies involved in all areas of ESG investing across the globe.
You can read more about the awards on our website here.
AIM community initiative
In April we took part in our first volunteering event at the Whitechapel Mission, our chosen charity. The Whitechapel Mission helps those who are sleeping rough in London, from providing meals, showers and clothing to its advice centres, supporting and encouraging people to improve their lives, gain employment and integrate into the community.
During the Breakfast Challenge we helped prepare and serve breakfast and drinks to London’s homeless, an incredibly rewarding experience. We look forward to future “challenges”, including a Clothing Challenge in July, and continuing to develop and build upon our relationship with the Whitechapel Mission.
