Australia Sustainable Equity

Overview

The Martin Currie Australia Sustainable Equity strategy invests in a portfolio of ASX-listed securities that we have assessed using a proprietary approach for understanding sustainability and financial attributes.

The Martin Currie Australia Sustainable Equity strategy invests in companies that have been assessed using Martin Currie Australia's proprietary Active Ownership approach and ratings framework to have more favourable Sustainability assessments for “Sustainability Risk”, “Net Benefits” & “Sustainability Pathway”, and “Shadow Carbon Cost”. This approach is premised on our philosophy that companies with these characteristics should prove to be more successful financially over time.

Our strategy is deliberately designed to focus on a company's overarching net benefit based on our assessment of the material benefits and risks that may exist, rather than applying a wide array of negative screens. This is because we believe in the importance of being active investors.

The development of the Sustainable Equity strategy was a natural extension of Martin Currie Australia's investment philosophy. Sustainability inputs and assessments have been embedded directly into our investment process since 2009, the year we became signatories to the PRI.

Portfolio construction for Martin Currie Australia Sustainable Equity strategy facilitates the tilting of the portfolio towards companies that we have assessed to have more favourable proprietary Sustainability characteristics and Shadow Carbon Cost assessments, while maximising expected returns using our multi-lensed proprietary research. We believe that this broad perspective of security expected return drivers leads to higher alpha generation.

We believe that there are few peer strategies available in the market that address the assessment of both sustainability and financial attributes in the way that the Martin Currie Australia Sustainable Equity strategy can.