Stockholm (NordSIP) – As the IMF argued in its recent Global Financial Stability report, the investment fund industry has a crucial role to play as a leader in facilitating the climate transition to a green economy. To contribute towards this global effort, SEB Investment Management announced the launch of the SEB Global Climate Opportunity Fund – a thematic fund focusing on companies that are judged to have solutions to global climate challenges.
“The transition to a society with lower emissions creates many interesting investment opportunities that we want to take part in. We want to find the Amazon or Apple of the future in climate change,” says Sofia Wärmlöf Helmrich (Pictured), who manages the fund together with Mirelle Zetoun.
The fund is available to both institutional and retail investors and is classified as Article 9, according to the EU’s SFDR regulation (Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, which means that it has sustainable investment as its goal. It aims to generate long-term sustainable positive impact and invests in listed companies with products and services that combat climate change, for example by slowing down the rise in global temperatures through reduced carbon dioxide emissions but also by adapting society to the effects of climate change.
“We are seeing great interest so hopefully, we can grow the product with both good performance and inflows. We have a broad universe of stocks to select from and as the climate transition picks up pace we expect this universe to expand further. This gives us ample room to substantially grow the product,” Wärmlöf Helmrich adds.
The fund targets specifically SDG 13 – Climate Action, has €260 million in assets under management and can invest in both developed as well as emerging markets and consists of about 100 companies, without limitation regarding either the size of the companies or the sector.
The risk is comparable to the global equity market. “The fund will differ significantly in sector and country allocation from global equity markets and the return can therefore deviate as well. In the longer term, our belief is that the companies we invest in will help solve the climate challenges we are confronted with and that the market will reward that,” Wärmlöf Helmrich continues.
One of the most important tools for identifying companies to include in the fund is the sustainability classification, or taxonomy, that the EU has developed. The fund tracks companies’ carbon footprint as well as many others sustainability factors.
“We want to invest in companies with climate solutions that also perform strong on other sustainability factors. We use our proprietary sustainability model that scores companies across a range of sustainability-related issues. This helps us avoid companies that do not live up to our standards on other sustainability factors than climate. One of our most important tools to identify companies to include in the fund is the EU taxonomy and we aim to invest in companies with revenues from taxonomy aligned activities,” Wärmlöf Helmrich concludes.
Approximately 2% of SEB Investment Management’s assets under management in mutual funds are classified as Article 9 according to SFDR. Another 82% are classified as Article 8.
