Cazenove Capital, part of the Schroders Group, has been selected by three charities to manage a £33.5m sustainable investment mandate as part of an ESG competition earlier this year.
Friends Provident Foundation, the Joffre Charitable Trust and the Blagrave Trust will become cornerstone investors in the Cazenove Sustainable Growth fund, which will be available to charities and individual investors when it launches in December.
Cazenove said the new multi-asset fund will invest across a range of assets, such as sustainable business, renewable energy and social housing.
Kate Rogers, co-head of charities at Cazenove Capital, said the fund has “a clear intention to generate both a competitive financial return and a positive impact on people and the planet”, and that it will have a carbon footprint of less than half of the global equity index, while generating five times the social impact.
The competition to be awarded the mandate was an open tender which received 60 proposals from asset managers, with those proposals assessed for intentional social and environmental impact and high standards of ESG integration, encompassing exclusion, engagement and its escalation, voting records, in-house expertise, and impact reporting.
In March this year, five of the managers were invited to present to mission-led investors, including charities and religious organisations, at the Royal Institution in London.
Colin Baines, investment engagement manager at Friends Provident Foundation, said: “Our trustees were torn between choosing an ‘evolving incumbent’ or a ‘new disruptor’ and decided on the former.
“We were impressed with Cazenove Capital’s proposal, which meets our new, challenging, investment policies, was well received by attendees in March, and offers the potential to achieve scale and influence the wider market.”
He said that the competition, dubbed the “ESG investing olympics”, sent “a clear market signal for higher ESG standards”.
Rogers added: “The ESG ‘investing olympics’ set an amazing example of collaboration and transparency, breaking new ground in sustainable investing.
“We look forward to continuing in this spirit, working with the charities to use their investments for good and developing best practice in impact investing.”
In February, Cazenove was appointed by the University of Reading to manage its £120m multi-asset endowment portfolio on a low carbon basis.
