Leading European asset manager Amundi announced today the launch of the Amundi Funds ESG Improvers range, a new strategy aiming to invest in companies with ESG-related growth potential at an early stage.

The new actively managed strategy will initially kick off with two equity funds, European Equity ESG Improvers and Pioneer US Equity ESG Improvers, with more to follow including both equity and fixed income strategies. European Equity ESG will be benchmarked against the MSCI Europe Index, and its US counterpart will be indexed against the S&P 500.

According to Amundi, the ESG Improvers strategy takes a forward-looking approach to identify companies with promising ESG trajectories. The funds will exclude companies not aligned with the firm’s ESG framework, and will select those that are fundamentally attractive and that are showing real and material progress on ESG, identified through a fundamental bottom up investment process which integrates Amundi’s proprietary ESG methodology. In addition, Amundi stated that it will actively engage with company management throughout the investment process to understand and positively impact the company’s financial and ESG credentials as a whole. This process will be used to build a portfolio of concentrated, high conviction holdings.

Vincent Mortier, Deputy CIO at Amundi, said:

“ESG Improvers is a new concept that Amundi has developed which leverages our strength across various teams and locations. It offers investors an opportunity to be part of an actively managed portfolio of tomorrow’s ESG winners. This fundamental bottom up concept is designed to offer attractive risk adjusted returns and to encourage companies to improve the ESG credentials.”