Sustainable and ESG Investment Awards finalist interview: GIB Global ESG-Plus

Catching up with this year's finalists

The GIB Global ESG-Plus strategy was a finalist in the Best Newcomer category at this year’s Investment Week Sustainable and ESG Investment Awards.

What is the current construction of the portfolio and key themes included?

We believe that our deep scoring expertise is critical to sound stock selection, so our ESG scoring model plays a major role in portfolio construction. 

Roughly 250 securities are included that are best-in-class and this is reviewed monthly. On a quarterly cycle, we review the holding of 50 further securities that are chosen based on their improving ESG score.

The weighting of the core portfolio is derived from the company score, while also applying an overweight for large-cap securities. The momentum portfolio additionally applies a higher weight to the most improved companies with respect to their ESG score.

We then ensure the shape of the portfolio does not exceed internally defined thresholds at a country and sector level, to ensure an appropriate diversification and balance for investors. 

We assess companies relative to five major sustainable development themes that we believe are particularly critical for investors who are looking to make a positive difference:

• Equality, Diversity and Human Capital (SDG 6, 7, 12 and 13)

• Climate, Environmental Action and Water (SDG 1, 2 and 3)

• Health and Wellbeing (SDG 4, 5, 8 and 10)

• Governance and Accountability (SDG 16)

• Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG 9 and 11)

How do you see the strategy developing in the future?

Our philosophy is to enable clients to focus their ESG investments in areas that matter most to them.

Our proprietary ESG capability and deep expertise allows us to tailor the strategy to represent our clients' investment and sustainability objectives through tailored exclusions, Shariah investment considerations, targeted ESG impact or thematic tilts. 

This ability to customise makes the strategy flexible, and whilst today we are seeing particular interest on challenges around climate change, health and water crises, if this changes in the near future, our strategy can and will adapt. 

Furthermore, we regularly review our model to ensure our assessment is suitably dynamic, and to incorporate new and improved data points and the latest research. 

We also look forward to being able to apply the ESG-Plus strategy to a larger universe of companies as high-quality ESG data becomes more widely available. 

If you missed this year's ceremony, click here to watch it in full .