A Committed Player

By signing the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), Amundi Group has reasserted its commitment to responsible finance.

The PRI are six principles in the form of 32 actions developed under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme - Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI) and the Global Compact, currently supported by over 500 major institutional investors and asset management companies. Aware of the growing importance of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, the signatories make a commitment to take these criteria into account in all of their investment analysis and decision-making processes, to encourage ESG practices among issuers and the investment industry, and to collaborate in implementing these principles.

Amundi supports this initiative, which corresponds to its view of investors as playing a central and financially responsible role, obliged to take all material factors into account in their investment management, including ESG criteria.

Each year, Mercer is asked by PRI to carry out a general survey based on a questionnaire sent to the signatories in order to assess progress made. Each signatory then receives an individual score relative to all signatories and its peers.

Amundi firmly believes that overall analysis of a company, encompassing economic, social and environmental aspects, allows for better assessment of the risks and opportunities that may affect its long-term valuation. Amundi's extra-financial research and analysis are centralised at IDEAM, its dedicated responsible investment subsidiary.

As part of its policy of shareholder dialogue, Amundi supports a number of collective shareholder initiatives, such as the Institutional Investors' Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the CDP Water Disclosure, the Forest Footprint Disclosure, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and the UN Global Compact Investors' Initiative.

These international initiatives bring together institutional investors and asset management professionals with the aim of encouraging companies to improve their practices and communications with regard to social responsibility and sustainable development, and encouraging public authorities to adopt incentive measures. The concerned areas are climate change, deforestation, and transparency in contractual relationships between companies and extractive industries (oil, gas and mining) and the countries in which they operate.

Amundi is a member of the Forum pour l’Investissement Responsible (FIR), Eurosif, the Observatoire sur la Responsabilité Sociétale des Entreprises (ORSE), and also AFG, the Institut Français des Administrateurs (IFA), and the Société Française des Analystes Financiers (SFAF). Amundi plays an active role in a number of working parties organised by these organisations to develop responsible investment, sustainable development and corporate governance.

The exercise of voting rights and shareholder dialogue are essential elements of our fiduciary responsibility and our role as a responsible investor.

From 1996 onwards, Amundi established its own voting policy updated yearly in order to incorporate the best practices in corporate governance but also, since 2003, in social and environmental responsibility. Amundi decided to exercise the voting rights for a very large majority of its funds under French and Luxembourg law in order to fulfill its responsibility as a shareholder.

Early in its commitment toward responsible investment, Amundi also implemented a shareholder dialogue process based on an alert system informing companies of the SBF120 index and a group of large European issuers of potential negative votes at their general meetings.

Voting and dialogue allow us to actively participate in the improvement of the practices of companies in which we invest.

Amundi has launched a Scientific Committee on Responsible Finance Issues. The Committee has around 15 permanent members comprising people renowned for their areas of expertise, such as business owners, economists, financiers, philosophers, scientists, sociologists and key personnel from the Crédit Agricole Group.

The Committee's role is:

• to review, from the angle of its members’ various disciplines, the major issues relating to sustainable development;
• to draw up practical recommendations for businesses and analyse whether they are correctly translated in terms of responsible investment;
• to assist in disseminating the results of its work in documents distributed to employees of the Crédit Agricole Group, Amundi and its customers, as well as various marketplace institutions;
• to foster greater public awareness.

The diversity and quality of the Committee members' areas of expertise, as well as their professional experience and positions of responsibility, constitute a huge advantage for the success of their work.

Amundi supports the creation and financing of the first "Sustainable Finance and Responsible Investment" academic chair, sponsored by the Association Française de Gestion (AFG) and set up by the Ecole Polytechnique and the Institut d’Economie Industrielle (IDEI) in Toulouse.

Its main aims are:

• to help show objectively that developing sustainable finance and responsible investment is not only necessary but above all possible;
• to develop research methodologies to ensure better identification of extra-financial criteria and their integration into analysis;
• to build up a scientific team with an international reputation in SRI.

The chair's research will concern two main areas: "financial markets, investment strategies and sustainable growth"; "corporate governance and sustainable finance".

The FIR Finance and Sustainability European Research Award

Amundi is a financial backer of the FIR Finance and Sustainability European Research Award and a member of its Steering Committee. This award is intended to support and promote European research into the financial markets' responses to sustainable development issues. It rewards academic research by students and researchers in the field.

Aware of its responsibility as a key player in the asset management industry, Amundi has adopted the highest standards in applying marketplace regulations, particularly with regard to information and transparency on the instruments and management techniques used. Furthermore, within the framework of its active asset management, it does not allow its UCITS funds to invest directly in companies involved in the manufacture or trade of antipersonnel mines and cluster bombs.

Amundi Group puts the ESG Transparency of its responsible investment funds online

IDEAM makes public the composition of the responsible investment funds managed by Amundi Group and calculates their ESG footprint.
The ESG footprint is worked out by IDEAM's Responsible Research team and based on its reference system covering environmental, social and governance criteria in the management of responsible investment funds. The results are provided in the form of scores and charts, for both the portfolio and its benchmark index.