Profile

Product Name	Altius Sustainable Bond Fund
Issuer	Altius Asset Management
Category	Investment product
Type	Fund/Trust
Target	Retail, Wholesale
Certified Since	2015
Certification Symbol	SRI
Asset Classes	Fixed income
Markets	Australia
Investment Approaches	Norms-based screening, Negative Screening, Following the negative screen the remainder of the corporate universe is assigned a sustainability rating. The Sustainability committee is also charged with integrating portfolio holdings and requesting further research from the credit team.
It Includes:	More sustainable companies
It has some level of screening for:	Tobacco Nuclear energy (including uranium) Human rights abuses Labour rights violations Animal cruelty Armaments Alcohol Gambling Pornography

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.