Exclusion

We believe that our sustainability strategy aids us in choosing the best financial investments, but also in excluding companies that violate human rights, contribute to serious environmental damage or develop products and services that we consider unsustainable – from an investment as well as a societal perspective.

Below is a selection of business activities we exclude when investing.

• Companies that produce fossil fuels, including unconventional extraction of fossil fuels, such as oil sands and deep-sea drilling in particularly sensitive areas.
• Companies that do not to comply with international standards and conventions regarding human rights, the environment, anti-corruption or labour law and where the company cannot demonstrate clear goals and ongoing measures to address the problems.
• Companies that manufacture, develop or sell weapons that violate international conventions and companies that participate in the development of nuclear weapons programs or produce nuclear weapons.
• Companies that produce tobacco and pornography, as well as companies where more than five percent of total sales come from the distribution of such products.

Some funds also exclude investments in:

• Companies where more than 5 per cent of their revenue from the development, production and service of weapons comprising combat equipment, or certain other military equipment.

SEB Investment Management's Exclusion Committee makes the formal decision on which companies to exclude from investments. The committee meets at least four times a year and ensures that the companies on the exclusion list still fall under the criteria set for exclusion in SEB Investment Management's Sustainability Policy. The exclusion committee also identifies so-called transition companies, which are companies that work actively and set concrete goals to reduce their climate impact.

Adverse impacts as part of our sustainability model

By excluding investments in industries and sectors that have a negative impact on the environment, we can reduce the adverse impacts our investments have on a sustainable development. Adverse impacts are also integrated into our own sustainability model, which uses both internal and external data sources to identify which companies that do not handle sustainability-related risks.

Transition

The development and transition in many fossil-heavy industries has been slow in recent years, and change is needed. We believe in investing in companies with clear goals and transition plans, demonstrating that they are on the right track. By doing so we can promote a quicker progression in industries that our society is dependent on, but that currently have a negative environmental impact.

The ability for companies to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and thereby limit climate change has generally been missed, due to the lack of investment in renewable energy sources. A transition is both necessary and possible, but requires global mobilization of economic resources. Investments in fossil-heavy industries need to decrease as a whole, while investments in inventive, green solutions need to increase in the existing fossil-heavy sectors.

It is our job as an investor to work with identifying companies that play a key role in this transition. With this in mind, we can choose to invest in companies within industries that currently have a negative environmental impact, but that our society is dependent on. This is done only after careful assessment – where the company in question needs to be able to present a clear and credible transition plan, in order to be considered investible by us.