Altius Sustainable Bond Fund

Product Name	Altius Sustainable Bond Fund
Issuer	Altius Asset Management
Category	Investment
Type	Fund or Trust
Target	Retail, Wholesale
Certified Since	2015

Asset Classes	Fixed income
Markets	Australia
Investment Approaches	Negative Screening, Best in class screening
It Includes:	Impact investments More sustainable companies
It has some level of screening for:	Alcohol Animal cruelty Armaments Fossil fuels Gambling Nuclear power Pornography Tobacco
Broker	Responsible Returns
URL	https://www.responsiblereturns.com.au/investment-options/altius-sustainable-bond-fund/profile

Overview

The Altius Sustainable Bond Fund is a diversified portfolio of fixed interest securities designed to align with investors’ specific personal and social values without compromising returns over the long term. All well-diversified portfolios should have an allocation to bonds but investors looking for responsible investment choices in fixed income have had few options available to them. As the market demand for sustainable equity funds increases, we believe that in time investors will exercise a similar degree of scrutiny before buying bonds in corporations or governments engaging in unsustainable activities

Description

The Fund is an “active and diversified” fixed income fund which aims to optimise returns for investors in all market conditions.

Altius’ investment strategy applies a high conviction approach and seeks opportunities to take advantage of the mispricing of bonds at all stages of the economic cycle.

In addition to satisfying Altius’ comprehensive fixed income investment process, securities considered for the fund must satisfy criteria documented in a Sustainability Policy maintained by the Altius Sustainability Advisory Committee. The Sustainability Policy contains principles which form the basis of a ‘sustainability screen’ that determines an investment universe of security issuers. The Committee has appointed an independent external research provider to monitor and rank eligible security issuers. Securities that are deemed high risk are removed from the investment universe. The screen addresses issues such as violations to labour rights and environmental laws as well as material revenue from sectors such as tobacco, armaments and the production and sale of thermal coal.

In the case of non-corporate fixed interest assets, Altius excludes non-cooperative countries or territories to the Financial Action Task Force – for involvement in anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing.

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The products featured on this site have all achieved certification under the Responsible Investment Association Australasia’s (RIAA) Responsible Investment Certification Program — the underlying principles?

Transparency & Verification

What sets these investment products aside from regular ones on the market is they all have some type of responsible or ethical strategy applied to them.

At a minimum, their issuers explain these strategies in public documents and open their offices and books to third party verifiers who check these strategies are implemented according to what you read about them publicly.

You can also click through to see the underlying managers and / or stock holdings in each certified product as well as access a certified product’s recent performance results.

Stewardship & Impact

In July 2019, we lifted our requirements of certified products which we are phasing in over 18 months.

We now require that issuers have organisation-wide commitments to responsible investing and they exercise their responsibilities as stewards of your money - through engaging with companies to improve sustainability performance and voting on shareholder resolutions where possible. All certified products now need to at least avoid significant harm and their issuers will annually report against any sustainability-based claims made by their products. This uplift in program standards is part of our passion for, and on-going commitment to, responsible and ethical investing.

Even though we're lifting the bar, we know your convictions to doing good with your money may be higher and so we have served up our member's certified products with a large dose of transparency and independent verification, so that you can draw your own conclusions from reliable information and choose investments that best suit your individual needs.