Nanuk Asset Management unveils Impact Calculator as firm is recognised as a ‘top 10 responsible investment leader’
Paul Chadwick
Nanuk Asset Management, an industry leader in sustainable and responsible investing,has announced the launch of its new Impact Calculator. The Impact Calculator provides a personalised view for investors allowing them to estimate the individual impact of their investment in the Nanuk New World Fund.
The Nanuk Impact Calculator provides investors with an easy-to-use digital tool for calculating the involvement of underlying investments across: Education, Food Production and Distribution, Healthcare, Renewable Energy, Waste Management and Recycling, and Water Supply and Treatment.
The underlying data for the Impact Calculator is provided by Sustainable Platform, an independent research company and one of the world’s leading sustainability data providers. The Impact Calculator utilises Sustainable Platform’s proprietary categorisation of companies’ revenues to estimate the revenue associated with selected Sustainable Development Goal targets. The methodology captures direct and indirect contributions of companies.
Nanuk Asset Management is exclusively focused on sustainably themed responsible investments – specifically, investing globally in listed companies whose activities and practices contribute to or benefit from the transition to greater global sustainability. According to Sustainable Platform, the Nanuk New World Fund provides 14% higher contribution to UN SDG’s, 9% lower Greenwashing Risk and 19% lower Reputation risk than their broad coverage of global equities.
The momentum behind interest in ESG and sustainable assets amongst investors and financial advisers in Australia shows no signs of abating. According to a report released yesterday by the Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA), responsible investing assets are growing at 15 times the rate that overall Australian professionally managed investments have grown.
The 2021 RIAA report provides the most comprehensive review of the responsible investment sector and highlighted that only one quarter of investment managers are practicing a leading approach to responsible investing. Nanuk Asset Management has been recognised as one of the top 10 responsible investment leaders’ by RIAA in the 2021 report. This acknowledges Nanuk’s commitment to responsible investing; their explicit consideration of environmental, social and environmental factors in investment decision making; their strong and collaborative stewardship and their transparency in reporting activity, including the societal and environmental outcomes being achieved by the firm.
Chief Investment Officer of Nanuk, Tom King said: “Australians increasingly want to direct their investments towards companies that are helping to deliver social and environmental benefits as well as providing a decent return on their investment. But investors have little insight into how effective those investment funds are in achieving that. Sustainable Platform’s data allows us to present a clearer picture of the areas in which our investments are contributing.”
Nanuk Asset Management is one of the few Australian asset managers dedicated to investing in industries related to global sustainability and resource efficiency. Nanuk invests only in companies whose activities materially contribute to improving global sustainability. Nanuk Asset Management recently reached the $500 million assets under management milestone.
Key to preventing greenwashing are transparency tools
As many investment firms attempt to ride the ‘green wave’, Nanuk highlights the risks of products not providing what investors believe are increasing and therefore there is a greater need for transparency and new tools to ensure funds don’t misrepresent the nature of their investments and the extent to which they are invested in sustainable solutions as opposed to just avoiding areas such as fossil fuels.
“With the proliferation of products claiming ESG credentials, the industry needs to be more accountable and improve the reporting on how their funds are delivering on the promise of their responsible investment approaches. ESG terminology is confusing, reliable data is scarce and there is no consistent way for investors to know who is spinning a story and who is walking the talk.
As the rapid growth in ESG investments accelerate we believe investors will increasingly demand greater transparency on the alignment of their investments with their expectations. The Nanuk Impact Calculator provides both an independent assessment of the involvement in specific areas as well as a simple and easy to relate to the illustration of the significance of these amounts.” concluded Mr King.
Paul Chadwick, Managing Director at Nanuk Asset Management, said, “This $500 million milestone is representative of the growing recognition that investment in areas aligned with improving global sustainability can also deliver strong investment outcomes.”
“At Nanuk we are very proud of our recent recognition by the RIAA as a ‘responsible investment leader’ and the development of the new impact calculator as a user-friendly complement to existing ESG reporting. We strongly believe that our focus on sustainable investing will help us continue to deliver better outcomes for investors”.
