Sustainability is in our DNA

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KBC is a global banking and insurance coverage group with 42,000 workers and 12 million shoppers throughout Belgium, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. KBC Asset Administration NV (KBC AM) acts because the group’s funding arm, working with 2.8 million retail and institutional buyers, creating merchandise for intra-group distribution and offering funding fund gross sales and advisory assist. On the core of our day-to-day motivation lies our motto ‘Everybody invested on a regular basis’ and our mission stays clear: make investing a wholesome monetary behavior for everybody, preserve shoppers feeling comfy when investing and so preserve them invested, and do that in a personalised, although environment friendly approach.

Sustainability is vital
IT is evident that the world has shifted in the direction of sustainability. This pattern can’t be stopped as a result of IT is pushed by moral considerations, monetary incentives, defending the surroundings, and ensuring employees are wholesome and completely happy. IT has grow to be an important focus for companies and buyers internationally.

At KBC Asset Administration, we built-in sustainability into our total company technique. The fundamental situation for sustainability is monetary resilience and vice versa. Solely by specializing in long-term sustained monetary efficiency and strict danger administration can we honour all our commitments.

Our clients additionally need to contribute on this space. Accountable Investing (RI) is a approach of permitting shoppers to mix their monetary targets with their considerations for the surroundings, society and company governance. The influence of world warming is without doubt one of the best challenges the world faces and could have a major and lasting influence on financial progress and prosperity. As a big monetary establishment, we need to play a number one position and be a major lever within the strategy of transition to a extra sustainable society and a low carbon economic system, by working along with all stakeholders.

Since 1992, KBC has tailored its sustainability insurance policies to replicate altering insights. IT can be the yr we launched the primary Accountable Investing fund in Belgium. We usually deliver new options to the market and our methodology has grow to be more and more stringent. KBC Asset Administration was additionally the primary monetary establishment in Belgium to have its personal Accountable Investing analysis unit.

Totally in step with our sustainability technique, all Accountable Investing funds have been fossil fuel-free since November 2017. And in Could 2018 KBC launched Pricos SRI, the primary SRI pension financial savings fund on the Belgian market. In 2019, all our Accountable Investing funds in Belgium obtained the ‘In the direction of Sustainability’ label, an initiative of Febelfin (the Belgian Monetary Sector Federation).

Remaining up to the mark
We’re, and stay, a pioneer concerning Accountable Investing. That mentioned, IT is a strategic option to carry on prime of the developments in our business. That features being future proof in a number of areas: up-to-date methodology, funding options that take the present sustainable challenges into consideration and offering state-of-the-art reporting. In reality we just lately up to date our Accountable Investing methodology with a a lot greater position for biodiversity because of the influence of world warming. A brand new biodiversity coverage is being added whereby firms with critical controversies over land use and biodiversity will now be excluded, in addition to firms with actions which have a unfavourable influence on biodiversity and that don’t take ample measures to scale back their influence.

Maintain evolving
The world of Accountable Investing is evolving quickly. Not solely are our shoppers’ expectations altering, the regulator has additionally revealed clarifications on the varied legislative initiatives and the standard customary of the In the direction of Sustainability label has additionally been tightened. That is why KBC Asset Administration screens its Accountable Funding methodology yearly to adjust to the latest developments.

Accountable Investing stands or falls by its credibility. Subsequently the sustainability coverage and standards are monitored by the Accountable Investing Advisory Board, which is totally unbiased of KBC. The physique consists of main teachers from a number of universities, who’re consultants in fields like human rights, enterprise ethics, biology and ecology. We give our shoppers a clear view of their investments.

For instance, a Accountable Investing dashboard was arrange within the shoppers’ cellular software, the place they’ll observe the targets of their Accountable Investing funds. This report is accessible to each investor. We need to be the reference and keep one step forward of the competitors. KBC Asset Administration will proceed to maneuver alongside the markets and the preferences of its shoppers to maintain its companies updated. We are going to proceed to work in the direction of a sustainable and accountable future, that retains everybody invested, all the time.