Responsible Investing (RI) is essentially the catch-all term for investing in an ethical, sustainable, impact, or ESG-aware manner.
Investors have become increasingly conscious of the impact companies are having on the environment and society. Investors are aware that some companies are undertaking activities that either avoid risks and/or are contributing positively towards sustainability.
One of the challenges in RI has been the lack of a clear definition and framework. Given the absence of a consistent industry approach, we took on the task of developing our own Index, the ERIG Index, to comprehensively assess funds and portfolios on a wide range of RI related themes.
To ensure that the ERIG Index took into consideration all aspects of RI, we adopted the RIAA Responsible Investment Spectrum as a foundation.
The ERIG Index assesses fund managers across all seven areas of the Responsible Investment Spectrum and provides a score from 1 to 10 for each area. This can then be compared to peers and sector averages.
This enables consultants, advisers and investors to assess the RI credentials of funds and to ensure their portfolios are aligned with their RI beliefs.
There are two outputs for investment products scored by the ERIG Index, an overall quartile ranking and the underlying responsible investment spectrum scores.
Each product is given an overall quartile ranking which reflects where they sit compared to peers in an overall sense.
Underneath this ranking sits their actual scores for the seven RI capabilities which gives a truer insight into a products RI ability.
Scoring RI capabilities is a complex task and we feel these two layers of outputs give an accurate insight into a product's RI profile.
Sign up to the ERIG Index Portal for access to these grades and our portfolio construction tool.
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