Responsible, Sustainable and Impact funds

These approaches to investing may be suitable for clients concerned about where and how their money is invested and who:

• want to invest based on their values or moral concerns.
   
• believe both financial and non-financial factors can impact on investment performance.
   
• want their investments to generate a positive social or environmental impact, as well as a financial return.

The value of an investment can go down as well as up so your clients might get back less than they put in.

Responsible investing - This generally means seeking to manage risks posed by Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) factors and avoiding harmful activities, which is typically implemented via negative exclusions in areas such as; controversial weapons, tobacco, coal mining or gambling.

Historically, the term "Ethical" investing has had a similar meaning to "Responsible" investing.

Please note, we do not warrant that any of the third party funds offered on Retirement Account adhere to the above examples, advisers should satisfy themselves via their own due diligence as to whether a particular fund meets their criteria.

Sustainable investing – this approach looks to invest in sustainability challenges that can also present a financial opportunity, whilst benefitting broad groups or stakeholders.

Impact investing – this type of investing aims to contribute to solutions to environmental or societal problems, potentially for underserved or disadvantaged groups or stakeholders.

The term "ESG" stands for Environmental, Social and Governance and these are typically factors that a fund manager can take account of as part of their investment process, whether that be in the pursuit of financial returns, managing financial risks or seeking to derive a particular non-financial outcome for investors. Examples of ESG factors are;

• Environmental - considers a firm’s carbon footprint or environmental challenges such as water usage, climate change or deforestation
   
• Social - is focused on issues such as working conditions like child labour, impact on local communities and workforce diversity
   
• Governance - concerns how a company is managed and includes issues such as executive pay, diversity, political activities, anti-bribery and corruption policies.

List of funds available

Please note that these funds have been selected based on Prudential's criteria and may not reflect the criteria of the underlying asset managers.