Incorporating asset owners' investment principles into the manager selection process is fundamental to our firm's entire client offering. We do not offer off-the-shelf investment solutions or funds-of-funds and we do not have fee arrangements with investment management firms. 

Our manager selection work is therefore independent and customized to meet the needs of the particular client. Incorporating our asset owner clients’ own investment principles into manager selection is a case in point that illustrates our unique value proposition to our many clients. We are able to strongly emphasize ESG/RI and alignment with their principles in a customized manner. No two asset owners principles and beliefs are the same. We therefore believe that this independent and customized approach stands out and differentiates our offering.
        

          The information provided in the previous Investment Research and Manager Selection and Monitoring sections largely answers this question.

Any manager selection process will draw on our deep ESG investment research capabilities, while being tailored to the specific investment policy and goals (including related to ESG issues) of the client in question. There is no single ‘recommended list’ or score for ESG managers, since all clients have different needs on ESG. Our manager selection work considering ESG factors spans all asset classes and extends from simple negative screens on passive equity allocations through to a deep impact investing research platform.

We have specific ESG resources to help manager searches with regard to specific client ESG issues. For example, we maintain a database of fossil fuel free investment strategies for clients pursuing a policy of fossil fuel divestment. Our manager database has search functions based on a number of ESG attributes and datapoints for underlying managers. We will also use quantitative ESG data tools to screen managers for compliance with other specific client polices (e.g. negative screens).

Finally, the fact we have a large number leading ESG/RI practitioners among our client base gives us the scale to help drive new ESG solutions where the manager selection process reveals a gap in the market of suitable products.
        

          Our monitoring process is based around frequent direct interactions with managers. Our scale gives us strong access to our managers. We would raise such issues directly with managers.
We have frequent dialogue on issues such as voting, engagement and defining the parameters of ethical exclusions. Our direct access to managers means we generally access ESG information directly although our due diligence data collection also collects PRI reports for evaluation.
        

          We maintain very regular dialogue with our typical asset owner clients on manager selection activities, culminating in their approval for advisory clients. This reporting happens frequently with investment teams between regular investment committee or trustee meetings, which are typically quarterly. Quarterly meetings will also cover monitoring activities. We also provide clients with quarterly manager monitoring reports on our research database.
        

          As we do not have our own productions and do not have “model” portfolios for our clients, the track record for our discretionary relationships is the purest form of our value added from manager selection, appointment and monitoring services as it represents decisions made fully be the Cambridge Associates investment teams.