Perpetual Ethical SRI Credit Fund

Product Name	Perpetual Ethical SRI Credit Fund
Issuer	Perpetual
Category	Investment
Type	Fund or Trust
Target	Retail, Wholesale
Certified Since	2018

Asset Classes	Fixed income
Markets	New Zealand, Australia
Investment Approaches	Negative Screening, ESG Integration
It Includes:
It has some level of screening for:	Alcohol Animal cruelty Armaments Fossil fuels Gambling Genetic engineering Human rights abuses Labour rights violations Nuclear power Pornography Tobacco
It fully excludes:
Broker	Responsible Returns
URL	https://www.responsiblereturns.com.au/investment-options/perpetual-ethical-sri-credit-fund/profile

Overview

The Perpetual Ethical SRI Credit Fund aims to provide regular income and consistent returns above the Bloomberg AusBond Bank Bill Index (before fees and taxes) over rolling three-year periods by investing in a diverse range of income generating, ethical and socially responsible assets.

Description

Perpetual utilises a strategy for screening ethical and socially responsible investments.

The following two screening processes ensures the product remains ‘true to label’ (Ethical/SRI):

1. An ethical screening process applies to the product to ensure that only issuers meeting certain ethical criteria can be held in the portfolio; and

2. An SRI screening process applies to the product to ensure that only issuers meeting certain SRI/ESG criteria can be held in the portfolio.

Issuers pass must pass both these screening processes to be considered for investment.

ESG integration processes are also applied to the management of the fund. This is part of our commitment to ensure our products are managed responsibly. More information can be found in our public Responsible Investment Policy which can be found at https://www.perpetual.com.au/investments/institutional-investors/responsible-investing/

1. Ethical Screening Process

Our ethical criteria include avoiding investment in issuers that derive a material proportion of their revenue (5% or more) in total from the following activities:

the manufacture or sale of alcohol
the operation of gambling facilities or the manufacture of gambling equipment
the manufacture or sale of tobacco*
uranium and nuclear
military armaments*
fossil fuels (upstream)
genetic engineering
pornography
animal cruelty (cosmetic testing)

*For involvement in highly controversial activities (production of tobacco, tobacco-based products and the development and production of controversial weapons) a 0% revenue threshold is applied.

Such issuers fail this screening process and are therefore excluded from the product’s investment universe. The remaining issuers are then subject to the SRI screening process.

2. SRI Screening Process

Our SRI criteria are based on a company assessment on a range of ESG/SRI issues.

Issuers are scored in relation to a number of criteria, including the environment, labour standards, human rights, supply chain, corporate misconduct, community commitment and ethics. Negative behaviour attracts negative scores while positive behaviour attracts positive scores.

All scores are then totalled. Issuers with negative total scores fail this screening process and are therefore excluded from the product’s investment universe. The remaining issuers become allowable investments.

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.

Perpetual Ethical SRI Credit Fund

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