• With an investment of more than USD 90 million, the Company is making headway with building sustainable portfolios.
• SURA Asset Management's stake in the ETF iShares U.S. Carbon Transition Readiness, supplements other steps the Company has been taking in its transformation towards sustainable investment.
• This investment involves millions of Latin Americans who, through their pension fund savings, are helping to drive the changes needed to provide the planet with greater well-being.
SURA Asset Management, specializing in retirement savings, investments and asset management, is to invest, through its subsidiary AFP Integra in Peru and Protección in Colombia (in which SURA AM holds a relevant but non-controlling stake), in the ETF iShares U.S. Carbon Transition Readiness ETF (LCTU) that BlackRock launched onto the market, this aimed at investing in large- and mid-cap companies, particularly those that are better prepared to transition to a low-carbon economy.
Through this investment strategy, SURA Asset Management and the aforementioned companies have subscribed to an ETF that is designed to identify all those companies that are best prepared to face the transition risks arising from climate change. Based on this premise, this ETF shall invest in companies that are focused on mitigating such risks and that are prepared to enhance their environmental impact in the long term through a proper management of Physical Risks, Energy Shifts, Environmental Rules and Regulations and Technological Innovation.
In this respect Ignacio Calle, CEO of SURA Asset Management, stated: "By investing in this Transition Readiness ETF, we are making a commitment to building a sustainable future. This is just one more initiative that we have taken as part of our corporate purpose, that is to say, playing an important role in building a better environment in Latin America, and in so doing help the planet become more sustainable, while better handling the risks relating to climate change. Our commitment to sustainable investing means analyzing potential investments in a broader, more comprehensive manner while going beyond the purely financial; this in order to make the right investment decisions, especially when these are such an essential part of our corporate mission".
This ETF was developed by BlackRock's Sustainable Investing Unit, which created and has managed its own proprietary strategy with its institutional investors since 2018. These funds build upon a variety of structured and unstructured data sources, as well as advanced analytics and research-based insights across the following five pillars: Fossil Fuels, Clean Technology, Energy Management, Waste Management and Water Management.
In addition to AFP Integra and Protección, other global institutional investors such as: CalSTRS (California State Teachers' Retirement System), Temasek, Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company, Grupo Profuturo, FM Global and RenaissenceRe, which, in total, shall invest more than USD 1.200 million. The investments made by this ETF make it the largest launch of its kind in history.
