Rathbone Greenbank Investments
Rathbone Greenbank Investments is the ethical, sustainable, and impact team of Rathbones, a UK-based investment manager headquartered in Bristol with 5 offices across the United Kingdom. It joined the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative on 29 March 2021 and its initial target disclosure was published on 1 November 2021.
Percentage of assets covered by the Net Zero Asset Managers Commitment Statement
80% of total AUM (USD $2.3 billion)
Information on interim target(s) covering the proportion of assets to be managed in line with net zero
Baseline(s):
Portfolio decarbonisation reference baseline
28.37 tco2e/$m invested as at 31 December 2020
Target(s):
Portfolio decarbonisation reference target
60% reduction in the carbon intensity of investments
Portfolio coverage target
Bottom-up, portfolio alignment target (covering direct equities, corporate fixed income and real estate):
% portfolio to be ‘aligned’ or net zero:
2020: 0% (high impact) 17% (low impact)
2025: 33% (high impact) 45% (low impact)
2030: 66% (high impact) 70% (low impact)
2035: 100% (high impact) >90% (low impact)
2040: Net zero (high impact) Net zero (low impact)
GHG scopes included:
Current financed emissions data is restricted to scope 1 and 2 emissions only. We hope to build out coverage of scope 3 emissions over time as data coverage and quality increases.
Methodology:
Net Zero Investment Framework
Scenario(s):
IEA Net Zero 2050 Scenario
Additional information
Proportion of AUM committed:
We have excluded ~5% of our AUM that is held in investments we class as ‘tail stocks’. As a discretionary wealth manager, we provide bespoke investment portfolios for over 2,000 individual clients. When we take on new clients, it is common for their existing portfolios to transfer in specie and to contain holdings that sit outside our core universe. Such holdings – ‘tail stocks’ – are managed to be sold down over time as the portfolio is reorganised in line with our sustainable investment approach. However, this may need to happen over an extended period to manage tax liabilities, market movements and other factors. We also exclude cash and sovereign bonds. While sovereign bonds are assessed for climate alignment, they are not included in our targets at this stage due to a lack of methodology for doing so. As a percentage of total AUM (inclusive of assets with methodological gaps) our target has ~80% coverage.
Policy on coal and other fossil fuel investments:
We do not have a formal policy in place, however our ethical and sustainable investment focus means that we have a de facto exclusion on coal mining and significant involvement in coal-fired energy generation. Investment in other fossil fuel producers is also extremely limited across our portfolios.
Further information:
Target Setting: The 2030 emissions reduction target is our interim target , enabling us to be on track to achieve net zero emissions by 2040.Using the baseline year of 2020 allows Greenbank to include investments in actively manged funds in our coverage, adding ~40% of AUM. The target is for 60% reduction by 2030, surpassing the 50% threshold. In addition, Greenbank’s 2020 baseline in scope holdings are less emissions intensive than the ‘universal’ benchmark (MSCI World). Therefore our targeted reductions are from a lower starting point and go above and beyond our fair share of global emissions reduction. For the portfolio alignment target, collectives are excluded at this stage due to lack of data, meaning coverage for this target is ~40% of AUM.