KBI Global Investors calculates contribution to SDGs

The boutique fund group has aligned investment strategies with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

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John Lappin

A specialist fund manager has calculated and published the revenue contribution from its resources investment strategies to the UN social develop goals (SDGs) to help investors understand their impact.

KBI Global Investors found that 76% of its revenues from it global resource solutions strategy are contributing to the achievement of the UN’s social development goals.

The global resource solutions strategy is a combination of three specialist strategies namely Water, Energy Solutions and Agribusiness.

The firm found that the SDGs to which the portfolio contributes most are SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities), SDG 7 (Clean Energy) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure).

The firm’s global sustainable infrastructure strategy had 82.5% of the revenue attributable to the portfolio directly supporting the SDGs meeting SDG9 showing a 40% revenue to impact correlation.

The boutique aligned the investment strategies with the UN Sustainable Development Goals – which set 17 goals and sub targets for the eradication of poverty and hunger, the protection of the environment, the provision of clean water and sanitation, and prosperity for all – from their introduction in 2015.

In March last year, with growing numbers of investors becoming interested in impact investing, the firm announced that it had quantified the revenue impact of constituent holdings in each of its natural resource strategies to the SDGs. The firm says it remains one of a very small number of managers with this capability.  It issued the figures, calculated to December 2018, this week.

Eoin Fahy, head of responsible investing, says: “Rather than having an anecdotal sense that investments in these strategies contribute to the achievement of the SDGs, it is an important breakthrough in that we have been able to quantify the impact of our investments in a replicable and transparent methodology.

“We haven’t seen any other studies that directly measure the revenues of portfolios to the UN SDGs and believe we are one of the few managers to measure and account for a negative element within our RASS score.  As investors’ appetite for high impact strategies continues to surge, it is gratifying to be able to offer them a range of KBIGI strategies that deliver significant and measurable impact in such a clear and transparent way.”

RASS scores for the two strategies

RASS scores across the SDGs

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