Castlefield has completed its first Sustainability Review, which aims to provide investors in Castlefield’s funds with detailed information on key ESG performance metrics, highlighting both areas of outperformance, and in the interests of complete transparency, underperformance.
The majority of the data in the Sustainability Review report is supplied by an independent provider, Impact Cubed and provides background on the positive themes to which the funds of the , the employee-owned financial and investment management business are exposed, supported by case studies. The report also details each portfolio holding’s net zero commitments – a focus of the team’s engagement over the last 18 months.
The funds detailed in the report include the CFP Castlefield Sustainable European Fund, CFP Castlefield Sustainable UK Opportunities Fund, CFP Castlefield Sustainable UK Smaller Companies Fund, CFP Castlefield Sustainable Portfolio Income Fund and CFP Castlefield Sustainable Portfolio Growth Fund.
Ita McMahon, partner, Investment Management at Castlefield said: “We now have the data to demonstrate the difference a Castlefield Sustainable fund makes. Compared to mainstream benchmarks, our funds have lower environmental impacts and far less exposure, if at all, to industries that are socially and environmentally damaging. Moreover, our funds have a higher proportion of assets invested in sustainable industries than their respective peers.
“As well as highlighting outperformance, we also wanted to be transparent on areas of underperformance by providing some context on contributing factors such as market cap, geography and sector exposure. This kind of reporting holds us accountable and we hope that this report offers clients reassurance that their values are reflected in the investments that our fund managers select and avoid.”
Aggregate performance across Castlefield’s sustainable fund range against the benchmark for each metric detailed in the report* – carbon efficiency, executive pay, social & environmental good, and social & environmental harm:
Carbon efficiency: tonnes of Scope 1 and 2 emissions per $1m revenue
-44%
Executive pay: ratio of executive level pay to average employee pay
-38%
Investing in social & environmental good: percentage of company revenues allocated to environmental and social good
· 123%
Social & Environmental Harm: percentage of company revenues that create social and environmental harm
· -80%
* Percentages represent improvement across the fund range, against the benchmark. For carbon efficiency, executive pay, and social & environmental harm, these figures are negative as a lower figure represents a better performance.
For example, on “social & environmental harm”, the funds perform 80% better than the benchmark given the lower percentage of company revenues which create social and environmental harm.
Conversely, on “social & environmental good”, the funds perform 123% better than the benchmark due to a higher percentage of company revenues allocated to social and environmental good.
