Sustainability in our investments

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More sustainability in our range of mutual funds

Since the turn of the year, Handelsbanken Asset Management has enhanced the sustainability requirements for the funds in the Swedish market. We focus on finding companies that contribute positively to sustainable development.

Companies we don't invest in

A new common framework for all our funds is the exclusion of controversial businesses such as alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, gambling, weapons, pornography, and fossil fuel. We also exclude companies who violate international norms and conventions regarding environmental issues, human rights, corruption, and workers' rights. How this is applied depends on the fund's type of management, active or passive. All of our funds exclude companies within the coal industry or who produce weapons that are prohibited under international law.

How does this affect fund management?

We follow new sustainability indexes for the index managed funds and we have raised the requirement for the fund distributors in which the allocations funds invest. These requirements also apply to external funds which our Multi Asset portfolios invest in. The actively managed funds follow the new sustainability criteria when excluding companies, but also work with analysis of sustainability risk and opportunities when choosing investments.

More companies want to be sustainable

Our actively managed funds also have the possibility to include so called companies in transition. That is, companies that want to transform their operations in a more sustainable direction. This means that we can choose to invest in companies that we would normally exclude, for example power producing companies switching from fossil energy to renewable energy. Our demand for such investments is that the transition in the company at least moves along with the Paris agreement demands.

Karin Askelöf

Karin Askelöf, Sustainability Officer at Handelsbanken Asset Management:

– The exclusion of fossil fuel constitute a common framework for all our asset management. We can actively support companies that works in line with the Paris agreement and exclude those that don’t, but our work does not stop there. As new questions about sustainable businesses arise, our management methods continue to evolve and we adapt our approach accordingly. The continuous development of our operations is vital if we are to meet the challenges of climate change.