Summary

The Fund is actively managed and will invest primarily in the global equity securities of issuers within a reference benchmark, the MSCI ACWI ESG Universal ex Thermal Coal 5% Index (the “Benchmark”). The Fund also excludes certain equity securities relating to civilian firearm producers, alcohol producers, and companies involved in gambling and the manufacturing of tobacco products. The Fund seeks to systematically exploit opportunities across countries, sectors and securities as they evolve over time by evaluating a broad array of predictive factors such as, but not limited to, value, momentum and earnings while actively managing currency exposures.

The Fund is classified pursuant to Article 8 of SFDR and aims to promote certain environmental and/or social characteristics. The environmental and/or social characteristics promoted by the Fund are to gain exposure to companies which demonstrate both a robust environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) profile and a positive trend in improving that profile. The Fund achieves this by (i) investing only in equity securities included the Benchmark and (ii) applying certain additional investment restrictions by seeking to avoid securities relating to civilian firearm producers, alcohol producers, and companies involved in gambling and the manufacturing of tobacco products.

The investment manager of the Fund has in place a trade compliance programme to monitor the portfolio of the Fund over its entire lifecycle to ensure that the Fund complies with its investment strategy, including alignment with the methodologies of the Benchmark and the additional exclusions described above. The Fund uses sustainability indicators to measure the attainment of the relevant environmental and/or social characteristics which measure the percentage of its investments that comply with certain “Controversy Exclusions” (as described below in the “Monitoring of environmental or social characteristics” section) on which the Benchmark is based and the additional exclusions.

The investment manager of the Fund relies on data provided by internal and external sources to ensure the Fund’s adherence to its investment strategy, including alignment with the methodology of the Benchmark and the additional exclusions described above. The primary data source is MSCI, which is the provider of the Benchmark. MSCI also supplies the list of companies that are excluded from the investable universe of the Fund pursuant to the additional restrictions. Any data provider is selected based on their industry experience, credentials and quality of data. The investment manager has carried out due diligence on MSCI with respect of the quality of the data it uses and carries out spot checks of the data on a periodic basis based on data provided to the investment manager by an independent provider. The data landscape for ESG analysis and reporting is rapidly developing, and data quality and methodology currently face industry-wide challenges such as lack of corporate disclosures, use of estimated data and evolving regulatory requirements. The investment manager has performed initial due diligence on the Benchmark and will monitor its composition against the screening criteria and methodologies that it is designed to follow to confirm that the operation of the Benchmark is consistent with the investment strategy of the Fund, including the relevant environmental and/or social characteristics it promotes.

The Benchmark has been designated as the reference benchmark for the purpose of attaining the environmental and or social characteristics promoted by the Fund. The Benchmark is aligned with the environmental and/or social characteristics of the Fund by: (i) excluding from the parent index any securities of companies subject to Controversy Exclusions; (ii) assigning each company a combined ESG score; and (iii) re-weighting the equity securities from the free-float market cap weights of the parent index using the combined ESG score to construct the reference index of the Benchmark.