Sustainable investment in China is still in its infancy. Only a tiny portion of the country’s $18 trillion ($2.8 trillion) asset management market uses strict ESG allocation strategies. However, the mutual fund industry is at the forefront of change.
China Asset Management Co, the third-largest mutual fund manager in China by assets under management (as of the end of 2020), is a leading practitioner of ESG integration and investment, and the winner of this award from Asiamoney.
The firm set up its ESG research team in 2017 and came up with localized evaluation metrics that are more suitable for domestic corporations. Now, all investment research within ChinaAMC must include ESG analysis. The firm also set up an ESG committee last year, directly under its chief executive Li Yimei: this works alongside the investment committee, the risk management committee and the information technology committee.
ChinaAMC has also put effort into cross-border collaboration. In March 2020, ChinaAMC and its partner, Dutch firm NN Investment Partners, launched the NN(L) International China A-share Equity Fund, the first international ESG-integrated fund that invests in Chinese stocks.