Invest with Purpose

ESG

 

ESG Engagement & Integration

 

At AB, we’re invested in being a responsible firm—both in how we act and how we invest on behalf of our clients. It is our vision to become a recognised leader in responsible investing, offering certain approaches that seek to combine strong financial outcomes with excellence in ESG research, integration and product design.

For many of our actively managed strategies, we integrate ESG into the investment process and engage with issuers to gain insight and advocate for progress. We believe that ESG research, engagement and integration help us better assess risks and identify opportunities, ultimately leading to enhanced decision-making and better client outcomes.

And because responsible investing can be a personal journey, we also offer a solution that goes beyond ESG integration and engagement to incorporate an explicit ESG agenda, sustainability.

 
 

The Critical Role of Responsibility

We believe that being a responsible investor begins with being a responsible company, and in recent years we have taken great strides to invest in our own corporate responsibility practices and our responsible investing efforts. To further our vision of being a leader in responsible investing, we’re investing in the following key initiatives

ESG Thought Leadership

We are continuing to partner with Columbia Climate School on climate change and investing. Through a first-of-its-kind climate change curriculum, we’re working to harness climate and investing science-improving outcomes for investors and the planet.

ESG Integration

We are deepening our ESG integration capabilities through our investor-driven ESG integration model. This has resulted in our combined ESG and fundamental analysts conducting joint research to develop and enhance proprietary frameworks and tools that can improve investment decisions for our actively managed strategies that integrate ESG.

Corporate Responsibility Practices

We are continually advancing our policies and behaviours to reflect the same standards of strong governance, positive social impact and thoughtful environmental stewardship that we expect from investee companies. Recently we’ve updated a number of our corporate responsibility-related policies and enhanced our emphasis on modern slavery, and diversity and inclusion considerations.

Net Zero Commitment

We have pledged to achieve net zero emissions at the firm level and we will work to align our business operations and a range of investment strategies with a 1.5-degree Celsius pathway by 2050, in support of the Paris Agreement. Climate science research suggests that by limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5-degree Celsius we can help the planet avoid the more catastrophic impacts of climate change.

 

ESG Integration

AB has long recognised that ESG issues can affect the performance of investment portfolios. We joined the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2011 and have been an active member, formalising our approach to ESG and responsible investing based on the organisation’s principles.

Today, ESG factors continue to play a critical role in our actively managed strategies including the AB Managed Volatility Equities Fund (Managed Fund)–MVE Class (MVE).

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Economic Overview

Sustainable Thematic Solution

Going beyond ESG integration and engagement, we have created a high-conviction global equity portfolio that we believe represents the most compelling sustainable thematic opportunities in the market. This is the AB Sustainable Global Thematic Equities Fund (SGT).

The Fund is dedicated to pursuing strong financial returns while investing in companies that may contribute to positive environmental and social outcomes.   

We’ve developed a clear investment process that begins with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and integrates ESG factors into all investment decisions.

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