Beckett Asset Management has launched a social investment strategy.
The company, which currently manages more than £230m of assets, said the social impact portfolio is multi-asset with the exception of the absolute return asset class.
All property funds in the portfolio have been awarded a Green Star by the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB).
The equity and bond funds are defined as ethical via Financial Express Analytics, with a minimum of 70 per cent of the funds avoiding human rights abuse, environmental abuse and animal testing.
There is a 1 per cent annual management charge (AMC), incorporating independent financial advice.
The company said the AMC of the model for any investors who are not BFS clients would be as little as 0.30 per cent a year.
Samantha Owen, a portfolio manager at Beckett, said: ““We recognised this to be an investment area of growing importance to many people and the Social Impact Portfolio reflects our commitment to adapting to changing investment environments.
“Ethical views can be quite personal and so we steered away from calling it ethical. This strategy aims to invest in funds with a conscience.”
The company asked potential investors to rank various criteria in order to identify the most common ethical requirements.
Craig Brown, portfolio manger at Beckett, said: “A clear set of rules has been made so that investors in the Social Impact Portfolio are fully aware about what negative factors are screened out in the fund selection process.
“We realised that a narrower investment universe would have made it difficult to construct a diversified portfolio and so 70 per cent of our equity and bond holdings will adhere to these criteria, and the remaining holdings will be defined as ethical by Financial Express.”
Kim Barrett, IFA at Hertfordshire-based Barretts Financial Solutions, said: “I am sure the fund is great but ethical investing is deemed to be a risk because of selective investing. The more selective you are, the more risk you’re bringing to the table.
“It is admirable but it depends on how far your filtering goes. If you look at every single company out there, you’re going to take issue with most and where do you draw the line and how good is your screening process? That is going to have a cost impact on the fund.”
