ESG & Sustainability

In this paper we review some of the most prominent forward-looking climate metrics (FLCMs) that are currently available to investors, including proprietary methodologies developed by dedicated providers.

Stocks rose for a fourth consecutive month in May, with the STOXX® Global 1800 Index extending its all-time high, as countries lifted restrictions put in place to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new DAX® ESG Target Index offers a sustainable alternative to Germany’s flagship DAX that is optimized to maximize the ESG score of the portfolio, with a tracking-error constraint, and that simultaneously reduces the carbon intensity by at least 30%.

While sustainable investing is not a new concept, its growing popularity means a sharper focus is needed on how to achieve sustainability goals without sacrificing returns or taking on too much unintended risk.

ESG integration, sustainability, and impact investing…While there may be overlap in the meanings of these terms, they each represent a distinct approach to “doing well while doing good” in investor portfolios.

Manuela Sperandeo, BlackRock’s Head of Sustainable Indexing for EMEA, explains why the world’s largest asset manager has placed sustainability as its new standard for investing, and how working with an index provider helps it best serve its clients’ responsible-investing goals.

Science-based emissions-reduction targets (SBTs) help verify that a company has embarked on a pathway to reduce its carbon footprint and get aligned with climate action efforts. The inclusion of SBTs in indices provides an efficient solution to investors wishing to adopt a responsible approach in the face of the global warming crisis.

In this post, we explore the second category in Qontigo’s index-based sustainability solutions: our ‘Enhance’ ESG offering. The category is made up of STOXX and DAX indices that aim to maximize the sustainability profile of portfolios, given investors’ needs to balance risk, return and ESG integration.

Stocks rose for a third straight month in April, with the STOXX® Global 1800 Index breaking an all-time high, as investors became more convinced that a post-pandemic economic recovery will take hold.

Qontigo has licensed the EURO STOXX 50 Index to KBSTAR ETF, the ETF division of KB Asset Management, to serve as an underlying for an ETF listed on the Korea Exchange.

We look at the STOXX index families that make up the first category in Qontigo’s index-based sustainability solutions. Our ‘Exclude’ category – consisting of the STOXX ESG-X, ESG Broad Market and ESG blue-chip indices – helps investors incorporate a varied degree of responsible engagement and risk mitigation into portfolios.

The growth of ESG impact as a fundamental variable in investing means investors need to reconsider where their portfolios’ new efficient frontier lies, Qontigo’s Global Head of Sustainable Investment says during a panel at the Sustainable Investment Forum Europe 2021.