At Goodbody Asset Management, we believe in the power of active management. We rely on deep fundamental research to identify attractive investments globally that can deliver strong risk-adjusted returns over the long term for our investors.  

These investments can also affect people and the planet. And so, we recognise that it is mission critical to deeply understand environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors and explicitly incorporate them into our investment research process. It’s the right thing to do.

Indeed, we believe ESG integration strengthens risk management and helps enhance the long-term risk-adjusted returns of the funds we manage. 

Our ESG journey began in 2018 – and we continue to review and evolve our practices to reflect the changing market dynamics. Here we document some of our key milestones on our journey, as well as our approach to ESG.

Today, ESG is now mainstream among financial market participants. But that wasn’t always the case: for years it was considered a niche pursuit. However, for us, we recognised that regulatory pressures as well as global sustainability challenges were creating new risk factors for investors – and they would ultimately result in growing client demand for greater ESG integration.

So, in 2018, we began our ESG journey, assessing our proficiencies and identifying our gaps. This allowed us to develop a credible approach to ESG integration: we invested considerably in team development and upskilling as well as appropriate ESG data and reporting tools, became a signatory to the internationally recognised UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). Recently, we reclassified 100% of our UCITS funds as Article 8 under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).

Now our team, which has significant experience deploying global equity strategies through different investment cycles and consistently delivering outperformance over the long term, explicitly incorporates relevant ESG information into our investment research process to help enhance the risk-adjusted returns of the funds we manage.

As we mentioned, we became a signatory to the PRI in May 2020, reflecting our commitment to responsible investment.

As a PRI signatory, reporting and assessment is conducted annually and is mandatory. We also have a duty to act in the long-term interests of the investors in our funds – and we recognise that applying these principles may better align investors with broader objectives of society.

The ESG landscape will continue to evolve in the years ahead amid changes to regulations, client preferences and the availability of ESG data and reporting tools. As a team, we will continue to thoughtfully analyse these changes and evolve our practices to reflect the changing market dynamics.  

This, we believe, will help enhance risk-adjusted returns of the funds we manage and deliver better outcomes for our investors in the long term.