• Products
  • Ex Sustainable Finance

IMPact’s approach to sustainable finance

The exclusion of controversial activities

IMPact’s investment approach vis-à-vis sustainable finance is based on the exclusion of specific controversial activities, in line with market standards. Specifically, the investible universe for WORLD IMPACT SICAV’s sub-funds and IMPact SIM’s discretionary wealth management services excludes issuers involved in the following controversial activities:

Issuers involved in the manufacture or sale with revenues from such activities equal to or greater than 5% of total revenues.

  • Civilian firearms
  • Military weapons
  • Gambling
  • Tobacco
  • Alcohol

Issuers involved in the development, manufacture, use, distribution, storage or transportation of, or trade in, controversial weapons.

  • Controversial weapons

Monitoring and management of the Exclusion Policy

  1. The exclusion policy proposed by the Sustainability Committee has been formally approved by IMPact SIM’s Board of Directors.
  2. Vigeo Eiris regularly conducts the screening of controversial activities, covering approximately 5 000 issuers, accounting for more than 95% of market capitalisation of listed securities.
  3. The Sustainability Department regularly updates and prepares the exclusion list by applying the exclusion criteria approved by the Board.
  4. The Middle Office and Trading Desk Departments implement the exclusion list on their respective front office systems.
  5. Compliance with the exclusion criteria is monitored on a weekly basis by the Risk Management team, which then directly reports to the Investment Committee and the Board of Directors.

Sustainability Committee

With sustainable finance rapidly on its way to becoming the mainstream paradigm on financial markets, IMPact deems it necessary to discuss internally, on a regular basis, all possible options for developing its approach towards sustainable finance, in accordance with the latest national and international trends. For this reason, IMPact has set up the Sustainability Committee in an advisory capacity, operating at the Board level.

The main tasks of IMPact’s Sustainability Committee:

  • to provide regular recommendations on IMPact’s strategic positioning in the field of sustainable finance;
  • to supervise the correct implementation of the Exclusion Policy approved by the Board;
  • to analyse structural trends and innovative investment products in the fields of sustainable finance at the global level.

Members of the Sustainability Committee

Gherardo Spinola

Blocco Inutilizzato – Gherardo is the Chief Investment Officer and member of IMPact’s Sustainability Committee.

Since 1991, he has worked as investment manager, adopting an investment management style capable of combining fundamental analysis with the exclusion of specific controversial activities, with a particular attention to corporate involvement in tobacco, gambling and weapons.

IMPact’s Exclusion Policy has been inspired by Gherardo’s approach to sustainable finance, formalising the exclusion criteria that Gherardo has applied in his investment management approach for over 20 years.During his experience in the Azimut Group, Gherardo also contributed to launching and then managing Azimut’s Sustainable Equity Trend fund.
Gherardo has been regularly invited as guest speaker to deliver lectures in master’s programmes focused on sustainable finance. Starting in 2021, he manages Art. 9 SFDR products with high sustainability ambition in the global equity market.