July 24, 2024

Assofondipensione has approved the agreement thanks to which all the data and scores of Asset Managers participating in ESG.IAMA will be shared with the Association itself, and its 32 member pension funds, to be used for bidding and mandate renewal activities, and which will allow, more generally, an effective ESG engagement of Asset Managers. ESG.IAMA allows the pension industry to have one more tool on the table for asset manager selection, and to take into account, for the first time in a quantitative and comparable way, the level of sustainability of the Asset Manager itself.

ESG.IAMA is the first quantitative standard that assesses the ESG identity of Asset Managers. Unlike other Asset Manager ranking initiatives focused on product and/or impact measurements, ESG.IAMA assigns a score (0-100) to sustainability at the corporate entity level. An Asset Manager’s ESG Identity encompasses all of its distinctive elements, from its organizational structure (governance) to the ESG consistency of its products for the market, via the way the entity “thinks” (its ESG corporate culture) and “engages” on the sustainability front (its ESG purpose). Indeed, the sustainability issue is shifting from the product to the Asset Manager as a company. ESG Identity is emerging as a crucial variable to enable the system to identify Asset Managers that are truly ESG and consistent with the services and products offered. This makes it possible to distinguish critically among the tide of “sustainable” funds that has filled the market and to protect against possible risks due to reputational and credibility crises of the Asset Managers entrusted with capital.

Giovanni Maggi, President of Assofondipensione said, ‘We are very proud of the agreement with ET.Group for the ESG.IAMA project, which once again demonstrates Assofondipensione’s deep commitment to sustainability. This new quantitative standard will enable member negotiated pension funds to make increasingly informed and targeted choices from an ESG perspective. With the Association, we have grounded several important initiatives in this direction, such as our voting rights project, because we are confident that large institutional investors must play an active role in the green transition‘.

Luca Testoni, Founder of ET.Group: ‘For the ESG.IAMA project, sharing the assessment with Assofondipensione is a crucial opportunity to make this assessment a system benchmark. Conversely, it demonstrates how there are important levels of knowledge and goals for sustainability in a world, that of pension investors, that has the characteristics to be a driver of the transition of the entire socio-economic-financial system. With ESG.IAMA we want to make a contribution to this journey‘.

You can find the press release here.