IM|Power recently teamed up with SharingAlpha to present the 2020 Wisdom of the Selector awards, which gave an opportunity to celebrate leading ESG funds, driving new standards and delivering alpha across a variety of categories. We interviewed each of the winners to find out what makes their funds stand out and how they’ve protected investments against recent market volatility. You can see the full list of winners and runners up here.
Following Columbia Threadneedle's win in the European ESG Bonds category, we spoke to the people behind the scenes, Simon Bond, Columbia Threadneedle, to find out more about the services and products they offer.
In a nutshell can you tell us about the principles of a social bond and what type of investors it attracts?
The European Social Bond Fund* aims to deliver both a financial and a social return by investing in corporate bonds across Europe. It has a clear focus on supporting positive outcomes for individuals, communities or societies as a whole. It attracts investors who want to make an impact with their money for the greater benefit of society but who don’t want to compromise financial performance. The growth of the fund inflows reflects the increased interest and desire for investments that can really make a difference.
What makes your fund stand out amongst the crowd?
The fund was the first of it’s kind in Europe, really leading the way with social impact investing. As well as demonstrating that we can do the right thing with investments and deliver financial Alpha, the fund also puts a strong focus on investments that deliver positive social outcomes to the most deprived in society. Simon Bond’s experience and enthusiasm for impact really shines through in the Fund’s strategy and approach.
How do you protect investments against the kind of market volatility we’ve seen this year?
As an active manager volatility can be an opportunity to add value and this has certainly been the case during 2020. We seek to both enhance financial return and social intensity through actively managing the bonds within the portfolio to add value. We also seek to target new issues and to follow the use of proceeds to the impact it has on society. Periods of strong issuance are good for active managers and this has certainly been the case in 2020, especially in response to the COVID pandemic. During periods of volatility we can also observe better new issue premiums available in the market which also helps deliver financial returns.
