Equality Roadmap
Inequality has reached a crisis point.
The income gap between CEOs and workers, the wealth gap between billionaires and the rest of society, and the lack of health and education access for the least advantaged – even in wealthy countries – all point to the growing inequality in society and the global economy.
In our Equality Roadmap – our third following our Biodiversity and Net Zero roadmaps – we explain how inequality underpins and reinforces social risks and threatens stability, growth, and sustainable returns. We offer a framework to help investors identify corporate activities that can exacerbate inequality and describe how we take action to fight It.
[1] Alphadirect, Employee Satisfcation And Stock Returns
Important information
Any views expressed here are those of the author as of the date of publication, based on available information, and subject to change without notice. This material does not constitute investment advice.
The value of investments and the income they generate may go down as well as up and it is possible that investors will not recover their initial outlay. Past performance is no guarantee for future returns.
Investing in emerging markets, or specialised or restricted sectors is likely to be subject to a higher-than-average volatility due to a high degree of concentration, greater uncertainty because less information is available, there is less liquidity or due to greater sensitivity to changes in market conditions (social, political and economic conditions).
Some emerging markets offer less security than the majority of international developed markets. For this reason, services for portfolio transactions, liquidation and conservation on behalf of funds invested in emerging markets may carry greater risk.
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment risk: The lack of common or harmonised definitions and labels integrating ESG and sustainability criteria at EU level may result in different approaches by managers when setting ESG objectives. This also means that it may be difficult to compare strategies integrating ESG and sustainability criteria to the extent that the selection and weightings applied to select investments may be based on metrics that may share the same name but have different underlying meanings. In evaluating a security based on the ESG and sustainability criteria, the Investment Manager may also use data sources provided by external ESG research providers. Given the evolving nature of ESG, these data sources may for the time being be incomplete, inaccurate or unavailable. Applying responsible business conduct standards in the investment process may lead to the exclusion of securities of certain issuers. Consequently, (the Sub-Fund’s) performance may at times be better or worse than the performance of relatable funds that do not apply such standards.