Fund Manager of the Year 2014: Responsible Investment

Winner

Perpetual Ethical SRI Fund 

Finalists

Onepath Sustainable Investments Australia Share Plus Fund

Alphinity Socially Responsible Share Fun 

A comprehensive ethical screen that delivers a true-to-label product meant Perpetual’s Ethical SRI Fund took out the Money Management/Lonsec Fund Manager of the Year Award for responsible investing. 

Portfolio manager Nathan Parkin said the ethical fund compound return over a three-year period stood at 19.5 per cent per annum before fees, against a market compound return of 8.1 per cent.  

He said the fund had a well-resourced team of 16 analysts and portfolio managers, along with dealing desks that were always on the road visiting companies and applying the ethical screening process consistently.  

“One layer looks at what a company does and if it doesn’t fit the ethical model, then it’s screened out of our process no matter how big the company is,” he said. 

“The second stage of our ethical screen is that it looks at how a company does its business. So if there are environmental concerns, it’s also screened out of our portfolio.” 

Alphinity portfolio manager Bruce Smith said its socially responsible share fund, a finalist in this category, uses quant signals to identify companies with good prospects of earnings upgrades, and the Australian share fund with the best possible return.  

“We tend to make more modest positions to the portfolio but we tend to get most of them right, so it’s been a very pleasing amount of time both for our broader share fund and the socially responsible share fund,” Smith said. 

OnePath Sustainable Investments Australia Share Plus Fund was also a finalist in the category. Fund manager Marissa Rossi said understanding the long-term sustainable cash flows of the companies that the fund invests in, and valuing them appropriately, was the key to its success. 

“There’s no duplication and minimal overlay because understanding long-term sustainability factors has always been what we do, and always has been part of our investment process and philosophy,” Rossi said.