In our due diligence process on third party funds we are committed to understand how ESG is considered by our managers.
In order to understand how counterparties deal with non-financial data since the end of 2018, we have started to submit a questionnaire both at fund house level and at fund manager level:
Fund Managers: in order to understand how these data can be important for the investment process and how restrictive they are with respect to their investment universe;
Fund Houses: in order to understand how important Responsible Investing is for the Fund House (dedicated resources, reporting lines,
sharing platforms, external data providers utilized vs internal analyses) and to understand their capabilities and deepness of the analysis.
All counterparties in Eurizon (Mutual Funds) Buy List are required to update this questionnaire every 2 years (last questionnaire request by end 2019).
In monitoring ESG integration, we seek both qualitative and quantitative evidence of application: Eurizon utilizes Morningstar data in order to gauge, ex-post, portfolio positioning in terms of ESG variables.
All the comprehensive information is required in order to be aware of the degree of integration of non financial data in the investment process;
for any new fund to be approved in Eurizon Buy List we consider ESG information, and it is strongly recommended to consider ESG information, although at present it is not binding.
ESG integration is constantly evolving and the team of analysts monitor industry developments.