“We are applying ESG criteria to our entire range of liquid and illiquid funds”

This statement neatly summarizes the presentation given by Eduardo Ripollés, Institutional Sales Director at MAPFRE AM, at a recent meeting organized by the Spanish Sustainable Investment Forum (Spainsif), entitled ‘The insurance industry in sustainable investment.’. The expert highlighted MAPFRE’s historic commitment to sustainable investment, both as asset managers and investors and as those responsible for the company’s own mandate for sustainability in terms of ESG criteria.

MAPFRE AM, which manages almost 40 billion euros in Spain and has a SICAV in Luxembourg whose assets have just passed 1 billion euros, has been committed to socially responsible investment for many years. It currently has four funds with ESG criteria that cater to all three letters of the acronym, particularly the S for SOCIAL, as with the MAPFRE AM Inclusion Fund, a fund that recently turned one year old and which focuses on companies that prioritize the inclusion of people with disabilities in their workplace. But at an online meeting attended by both the Directorate General of Insurance and Pension Funds and UNESPA (Unión Española de Entidades Aseguradoras y Reaseguradoras — the Spanish Association of Insurers and Reinsurers), Ripollés explained that beyond MAPFRE’s thematic funds, “we are applying ESG criteria to our entire range of liquid and illiquid funds.” Indeed, the successful infrastructure fund, MAPFRE Infraestructuras FCR, is a good example of this. Launched in partnership with Abante, this fund invests in the strategies of investment giant Macquarie. In just over three months, it has raised 300 million euros.

Ripollés also spoke of MAPFRE’s implementation of its own impact measurement model. “At first we used external metrics, ratings…but then we went further. The first step was taken three years ago when we became a stakeholder in LFR, not with the intention of increasing volume, but in order to have a unique methodology,” Ripollés said. At the end of 2017, MAPFRE bought 25 percent of La Financière Responsible (LFR), a company with a long history of SRI. Just over a month ago, MAPFRE AM managed to reach its objective of further increasing the credibility of its unique methodology among market participants, having received the prestigious SRI label, becoming, as Ripollés recalled, the first asset manager in Spain to do so.