Bringing Transparency to Actiam’s Portfolio

Building assets while reducing CO2e

Actiam is a world-leading responsible fund and asset management company with €60Bn in Assets Under Management. Their commitment to ethical and sustainable investing has led to them imposing strict fundamental investment principles that inform all of their investment decisions. They are the first Dutch asset management company to disclose the CO2e of all their investment funds and have further committed to a 25% reduction in emissions by 2025. This has involved the complete removal of coal and mining from their funds.

Our Understanding

The demand for absolute transparency across every investment meant that Actiam needed to augment financial performance figures with the ESG performance for each investment fund, as well as all underlying holdings. This would ensure that every investment decision would be fully informed, and that every retail and institutional client would be able to gain a holistic view of each fund’s performance in terms of both sustainability and profitability.

Our Approach

Actiam was clear from the outset that they required a partner who could bridge the gap between IT and the business, and rapidly deliver a solution to meet their internal deadline. To meet this need, we built a proof of concept within a 7-day period. The scope covered all aspects of ESG and financial performance, with the focus on producing figures for CO2 emissions, Water Consumption, a singular ESG score and the invested amounts. We achieved this despite the complexity arising from the intricacies of funds investing in other funds.

Measures of Success

The project was a clear success in terms of its original scope, as CadDo is now a single and verifiable source of truth for ESG data, informing the investment decision-making process and providing fund managers and investors alike with complete transparency. At the same time, the successful deployment of CadDo’s cloud-based metadata modelling has enabled:
  • More frequent and granular evaluation of fund make-up, highlighting ESG outliers and red flags
  • Clearer communications between Actiam and its clients about fund and portfolio performance, through online performance dashboards
  • Fresh opportunities for Actiam as an industry leader in the realm of responsible investing, supporting other fund and asset managers looking for help with their own ESG strategies