MAPFRE AM – the asset management arm of Spain’s and Latin America’s largest general insurer – is expanding its funds business with the launch of the MAPFRE Good Governance Fund in its Luxembourg Sicav offering.
In a strategy focused on extending the range of risk products to consumers and institutional businesses to enable them to generate long term real returns at times of falling savings rates, the company is adopting a Responsible Investment (RI) approach to expanding its fund range.
The new Good Governance Fund has been developed following extensive academic research into the impact of ESG factors on investment returns. MAPFRE AM recognised that in terms of pure performance the most notable contributor is Governance. Equally, the company is aware that embedding environmental and social factors into its company research through its RI policy ensures, for investors, a degree of hedging against moral and ethical concerns.
The academic research commissioned by MAPFRE from Cranfield business school in the UK and Siena University in Italy led the company to decide that Good Governance alone is not enough to ensure MAPFRE AM can fully deliver its fiduciary duties to clients. For while the academic research showed that Good Governance was important in delivering good performance it was equally important to ensure the firm chose quality companies, by which the academics meant “the ability to generate sustained earnings over the long term.” This is perfectly aligned with MAPFRE AM’s “value investment” approach.
By combining the two elements of ‘governance’ and ‘quality’ MAPFRE AM found, in back testing, significant outperformance of the Good Governance Fund strategy against the MSCI world index.
In a twist to the usual approach to identifying good governance, the two fund managers behind the Good Governance Fund José Antonio Méndez and Manuel Rodríguez focus particularly on the ownership of businesses and their accounting practices rather than overemphasising compositions of board and remuneration strategies. Such an approach demands that they seek deep qualitative information through fieldwork when researching potential companies for investment.
MAPFRE’s CIO José Luis Jiménez said, “MAPFRE Group is committed to the Sustainable Development Goals approved by UN member states in 2015. It is therefore a natural development that its asset management functions pursue a policy of Responsible Investment.
“The Good Governance Fund is one of the first tangible steps that we as asset managers have taken to support our wider business in its aims and objectives to make a significant contribution to the well-being of society. We will be taking further initiatives over the coming months and look forward to introducing our fund to our markets in Europe and Latin America,” said Jiménez.
MAPFRE AM is the fund management company of MAPFRE. With more than EUR 5.3 billion of Assets under management and a team of 12 investment professionals. Its investment philosophy combines long-term value creation with wealth protection. European Equity, European Investment Grade fixed income and Asset Allocation are the “core competences”.
MAPFRE is the leading multinational insurance company in Latin America and Spain with more than EUR 58.8 billion of Assets under management. With 38.000 employees and activity in more than 100 countries the firm have more than 34 million clients. In 2016 MAPFRE’s revenue surpassed 27 billion euros, with net earnings of 775 million euros.
For further information:
John Morgan - Fortuna AMC Ltd
Phone: +44 (0) 203 651 8925 Mobile: +44 (0) 7769 262272
Email: john@fortunaamc.co.uk http://www.fortunaamc.co.uk
Madrid, February 17th, 2017 MAPFRE. Corporate Communication (Tel: +34 91 581 91 68; 91 581 87 14); email: (juanfrances@mapfre.com; javier.fernandez@mapfre.com)