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Socially Responsible Investing

At Aberdeen, we recognise that many clients, in particular charities and family foundations, appreciate the importance of socially responsible investing (SRI) and wish their portfolios to have an ethical bias. We have a specialist SRI team with a long-standing reputation as experts in this field.

When building portfolios for clients with SRI interests, we ensure that all investments selected for the portfolios satisfy our rigorous ethical criteria. We tailor portfolios to meet specific clients' needs, screening for all, or a bespoke range, of ethical restrictions.

The two most popular funds utilised by charity clients looking for a more ethically-constrained portfolio are:

SRI Screening Criteria

Companies will pass our SRI screening if they:

Demonstrate an awareness of and propensity for positive practices within the defined ethical criteria
Make bona fide efforts to ameliorate practices in areas of historical weakness, or materially improve policies as a direct result of our contact with them
Do not contravene established limits regarding “automatic fails”
Do not demonstrate a combination of problematic trends which we determine, based on the criteria provided, to be unacceptable for investment by the Fund

Conversely, companies will automatically fail our ethical screening which demonstrates:

Animal testing practices for cosmetic or toiletry products
More than three instances over three consecutive years (within a single category of) discrimination, harassment or health and safety
More than 10% of annual turnover from
The production or sale of alcoholic or tobacco products
Gambling activities
The production or servicing of military contracts
Involvement in the nuclear power industry
The production or sale of weapons
More than 5% annual turnover from pornography production or sales
Substantial and direct involvement in oil pipelines or dams in the developing world
A history of poor business practices