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Funds Group: Arabesque Funds (FundVantage Trust)
Management Company: Arabesque Investment Management Ltd
Affected Funds: Arabesque Systematic USA Fund and Arabesque Systematic International Fund
Principal Sustainable Investment Strategy: ESG Integration, Exclusions

Summary:
The funds’ rules-based investment strategy combines a proprietary analysis of relevant non-financial issues, such as environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks, with a rules-based fundamental security analysis and a systematic asset allocation and risk management
The funds combine Arabesque’s proprietary assessment of non-financial risk factors such as environmental, social and governance issues, Arabesque’s proprietary assessment of alignment with the principles of the UN Global Compact, liquidity parameters such as market capitalization, daily turnover and free float to identify the investment universe of eligible equity securities. The funds use ESG factors to screen out companies that generate more than 5% of their revenues from weapons, gambling or tobacco.

Arabesque has developed a proprietary tool that relies on machine learning and big data, to systematically combine over 200 environmental, social and governance metrics with news signals from over 50,000 sources across 15 languages. According to Arabesque’s website, this is the first tool of its kind to rate companies on the normative principles of the United Nations Global Compact: Human Rights, Labor Rights, the Environment, and Anti-Corruption (GC Score). Additionally Arabesque’s tool provides an industry-specific assessment of companies’ performance on financially material sustainability criteria (ESG Score)

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Research

Research and analysis to keep sustainable investors up to-date on a broad range of topics that include trends and developments in sustainable investing and sustainable finance, regulatory updates, performance results and considerations, investing through index funds and actively managed portfolios, asset allocation updates, expenses, ESG ratings and data, company and product news, green, social and sustainable bonds, green bond funds as well as reporting and disclosure practices, to name just a few.

A continuously updated Funds Directory is also available to investors.  This is intended to become a comprehensive listing of sustainable mutual funds, ETFs and other investment products along with a description of their sustainable investing approaches as set out in fund prospectuses and related regulatory filings.

Getting started

Many questions have surfaced in recent years regarding sustainable and ESG investing.  Here, investors and financial intermediaries will find materials that describe the various approaches to sustainable investing and their implementation.  While sustainable investing approaches vary and they have thus far defied universally accepted definitions, many practitioners agree that they fall into the following broad categories:  Values-based investing, investing via exclusions, impact investing, thematic investments and ESG integration.  In conjunction with each of these approaches, investors may also adopt various issuer engagement procedures and proxy voting practices.  That said, sustainable investing approaches will continue to evolve.

In addition to periodic updates regarding sustainable investing and how this form of investing is evolving, investors and financial intermediaries interested in implementing a sustainable investing approach will also find source materials that cover basic investing themes as well as asset allocation tactics.

Inesting ideas

Thoughts and ideas targeting sustainable investing strategies executed through various registered and non-registered sustainable investment funds and products such as mutual funds, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs), closed-end funds, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Unit Investment Trusts (UITs). Coverage extends to investment management firms as well as fund groups. 

Independent source for sustainable investment management company research, analysis, opinions and sustainable fund disclosure assessments