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Alliance Trust to launch two new sustainable investment funds
Alliance Trust Investments has announced that it will launch two new sustainable funds in the third quarter of this year. The funds, along with three existing ones, will become part of the first risk profiled sustainable and responsible investment (SRI) fund range in the UK.
The two new funds are the eighth and ninth in Alliance Trust’s Sustainable Future fund range, which provides investors with additional options for both income and growth.
The Sustainable Future Cautious Managed fund and the Sustainable Future Defensive Managed fund will have risk profiles of four and five respectively. This means that financial advisers will be able to simply and quickly match clients’ risk profiles to the appropriate funds using Distribution Technology’s Dynamic Planner platform – which over 3,000 advisers currently use.
The existing Alliance Trust funds to be risk profiled include the Sustainable Future Managed fund, the Sustainable Future Absolute Growth fund and the Sustainable Future Global Growth fund. These three funds have a risk profile between six and eight.
Peter Michaelis, head of SRI at Alliance Trust Investments, said, “SRI is becoming more mainstream as investors increasingly want to see their moral and ethical choices reflected in the companies that they invest in.
“When you couple this with yet more evidence that SRI funds are capable of performing as well as, or better than, mainstream benchmarks – as we have demonstrated in the past few years – you can see why there is a strong demand to see SRI funds risk profiled.”
Research published last year found that almost two-thirds of UK investors want to be offered sustainable investment options. A similar amount also raised concerns about losing money by investing in unsustainable companies, such as one operating in the fossil fuel industry.
Joe Keefe, president and CEO of US-based Pax World Management, recently commented that myths around a financial performance sacrifice were “finally withering away”. This is supported by figures from Moneyfacts, which found during a 12-month period in 2012/13 that ethical funds delivered returns of 24%, compared with the 18% growth displayed by the average non-ethical fund.
Photo: bernadg via Flickr
Further reading:
Alliance Trust Investments changes position on fracking following review
Sustainable investment funds in focus: Alliance Trust Sustainable Future Managed
Video: Sense in Sustainability by Alliance Trust Investments