Cazenove declared winner of the ‘ESG investing olympics’

We are delighted to announce Cazenove as the winner of the ‘ESG investing olympics’ and look forward to becoming the cornerstone investors in a new best in class multi asset class ESG fund. Our Trustees were torn between choosing an ‘evolving incumbent’ or a ‘new disruptor’ and decided on the former. We were impressed with Cazenove’s proposal, which meets our new, challenging, investment policies, was well received by attendees in March, and offers the potential to achieve scale and influence the wider market.

We are thrilled to be selected by these leading purpose-led investors, and together are committed to investing for a better future. The ‘ESG investing olympics’ set an amazing example of collaboration and transparency, breaking new ground in sustainable investing. We look forward to continuing in this spirit, working with the charities to use their investments for good, developing best practise in investing for impact. Our innovative multi-asset fund, launching in December, has a clear intention to generate both a competitive financial return and a positive impact on people and planet. Available to charities and individual investors, the Cazenove Sustainable Growth Fund will have a carbon footprint of less than half of the global equity index and will generate five times the social impact.

We believe that charities should use all their assets to achieve their mission, rather than just the income generated from their endowments. In order to deepen our understanding of what this means in practice, the ‘ESG investing olympics’ has already enabled us to both get a wider sense of the market than would have been possible acting on our own, and to benefit from the expertise of others. We are excited to continue to learn together holding ourselves to high standards of ESG investing moving forwards.

I don’t want to give too much away but one positive trend identified is fossil fuel divestment becoming commonplace. Gaps in the market include less developed integration of the ‘S’ of ESG in stock selection, and weak shareholder engagement escalation policy and practice.