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BNY Mellon Investment Management 
BNY Mellon Investment Management, an asset manager with $1.8 trillion in assets under management, has launched the Responsible Horizons EM Debt Impact Fund this week, which focuses on sustainable investing. 

The fund meets the requirements of Article 9 of the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosures Regulation and is part of the Ireland-domiciled BNY Mellon Global Funds range, the firm said in a statement.

It invests in emerging market debt “impact” investments, aiming to achieve a positive, measurable social and/or environmental impact alongside a financial return. 

It is registered for sale in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, UK, Switzerland and Spain, the asset manager continued. 

Its portfolio management will be carried out by Insight Investment, part of BNY Mellon Investment Management.

The fund will consist mainly of impact bonds while also including impact issuers and improving issuers, the firm said. Each potential investment in the fund – excluding those held for specific purposes such as hedging and liquidity – has to pass Insight’s impact assessment framework which considers an issuer’s impact activity and reporting, while also incorporating data from Prime, Insight’s ESG ratings system, to analyse ESG factors.

Portfolio Manager Simon Cooke, who leads the fund, said: “Investors serious about impact cannot ignore emerging markets. They face some of the most pressing environmental and social challenges globally. They also offer an increasingly diversified, rapidly growing impact universe, particularly within the corporate debt space. We seek to identify what we believe to be the ‘best ideas’ from that universe to combine a structural yield premium with scope to deliver long-term positive change.”

This is the latest Responsible Horizons fund launch on the BNY MGF platform for European investors, from an emerging markets team with a combined average of 14 years’ experience. It follows the Responsible Horizons Euro Corporate Bond Fund, which has reached more than €1 billion ($1.1 billion) in assets under management, and the Responsible Horizons Euro Impact Bond Fund.