Aware Super Australian Equities Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) option

Product Name	Aware Super Australian Equities Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) option
Issuer	Aware Super
Category	Superannuation
Type	Superfund/Pension
Target	Retail, Wholesale
Certified Since	2016

Asset Classes	Australian only equities
Markets	Australia
Investment Approaches	Negative Screening, ESG Integration
It Includes:	Social and sustainable infrastructure
It has some level of screening for:	Alcohol Animal cruelty Armaments Fossil fuels Gambling Nuclear power Pornography Tobacco
It fully excludes:	Human rights abuses
Broker	Responsible Returns
URL	https://www.responsiblereturns.com.au/investment-options/aware-super-australian-equities-socially-responsible-investment-sri-option-1/profile

Overview

Many people like to know their super is invested in a socially responsible way. We offer a socially responsible investment (SRI) option that balance competitive investment returns with community accountability. Our Responsible Ownership approach integrates environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into our investment process for all of our investment options. A key feature of the SRI investment option, however, is that they exclude investments considered to have a highly adverse environmental or social impact, as identified by our screening criteria.

Description

What we rule out – ‘screens’

Our screens are broken down into three categories:
Climate Change screens

Ethical screens
Conventions and controversies-based screens

In addition, the SRI options have Discretionary exclusions, where a company may be identified as being unsuitable for these options for factors outside the formal ‘screens’ criteria.

Climate change screens

Coal mining, extraction, production, refining and processing (5% or more of total revenue)
Coal-fired power generation (5% or more of total revenue)
Oil and gas (conventional / unconventional) exploration, production, refining and marketing (5% or more of total revenue)
Fossil fuel transportation (5% or more of total revenue)
Fossil fuel supply chain and services (5% or more of total revenue)
Fossil fuel reserves (any company holding reserves with the intention of exploration and/or development of those reserves.

Ethical screens

Tobacco* (5% or more of total revenue)
Gambling (5% or more of total revenue)
Alcohol (5% or more of total revenue)
Pornography (5% or more of total revenue)
Uranium (5% or more of total revenue)
Nuclear power (5% or more of total revenue)
Civilian firearms (5% or more of total revenue)
Live animal exports (0% materiality threshold)

*due to undertake internal review of current tobacco production threshold in June 2021

Corporate controversies - companies consistently involved in severe incidents/corporate controversies, or that are at a high risk of being involved in serious incidents in the future.
Controversial weapons - including chemical weapons, cluster munitions, land mines and depleted uranium.

Discretionary exclusions

A company may be identified as being unsuitable for the SRI options for factors outside the formal criteria above at the discretion of the Aware Super Responsible Investment team. A description of each exclusion and the exclusion threshold can be found in the relevant Member Booklet or supplement, available here.

Performance results

Product holdings

Product documentation

Supporting documents

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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.

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.

*Information Disclosures

While all reasonable efforts are undertaken to ensure information and links on site are current there may be instances where information and documents are updated during the course certification (eg. PDS, Fact Sheet). Certified product issuers are required to update this information as soon as possible on the Responsible Returns site, but there may be some extenuating circumstances impacting timeframes.

The certification program may also assess information provided for certification based on proposed future changes to a responsible investment process that is in-line with Responsible Investment Association Australasia’s (RIAA) Responsible Investment Certification Program criteria. In such instances, members are similarly required to update this information on Responsible Returns within an agreed future timeframe. Old document versions may be reflected on site until this process is finalised.