A new chapter for Zurich’s evolving range of funds

Zurich have reclassified a number of our most popular funds, including the Prisma multi-asset range, as Article 8 under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), a European regulation introduced to improve transparency in the market for sustainable investment products.

What that means is we are disclosing lots of information on how our funds promote sustainable characteristics. As an active investor, we are committed to playing our part to help promote environmental and social characteristics and our responsible investment efforts should help us all achieve our collective goal of a lower carbon and more sustainable world. We are also conscious of our overarching responsibility to our customers, and the primary objective of our funds continues to be to help Irish customers save for their long-term goals through delivering active investment outperformance.

The reclassification to Article 8 is appropriate at this time and we see it as a complement to our existing top-down investment process. It is also part of the ongoing evolution of the wider sustainability agenda of Zurich Life.

An Article 8 fund can be defined as a fund which promotes, among other characteristics, environmental or social characteristics, or a combination of those characteristics, provided that the companies in which the investments are made follow good governance practices.

Zurich’s Article 8 funds

There are also several externally managed funds that are currently classified as Article 8 under SFDR, more information can be found on these in the Zurich Fund Guide.

The four pillars of Responsible Investment in Zurich

There are four core responsible investment activities within Zurich that support an Article 8 classification under SFDR. These core activities are:

1. ESG integration, which means investing with respect to the environmental, social and governance characteristics of underlying securities and ensuring that ESG data is incorporated into our investment process.
2. Active ownership is very important to Zurich as an active investment manager. This involves undertaking active ownership with the companies we invest in through exercising our shareholder voting rights and engaging and meeting with those companies directly. We aim to use as many of our votes as possible and understand the issues facing companies from a responsible investment perspective through our engagement activities.
3. The third pillar is selective exclusions. While to date Zurich Life has not adopted a broad-based exclusionary approach to investments there are certain situations where we believe exclusion criteria are justified. The exclusion criteria cover activities that are irreconcilable with Zurich’s values, sustainability strategy and reputational risk. This covers activities in thermal coal, oil sands and oil shale. The criteria also exclude investment in companies which produce, stockpile, distribute, market, or sell banned cluster munitions or anti-personnel landmines.
4. The fourth pillar is our carbon ambition. In May 2022, Zurich introduced a carbon reduction ambition to reduce the carbon intensity of equity and credit portfolios in our multi asset funds by 25% by 2025 versus end of 2019 levels.

The benefits of responsible investment

Zurich remain fully committed within the Zurich Group and in Ireland to Responsible Investment. We've been adopting those key responsible investment principles for over a decade. It’s also worth noting that the core of our investment process has remained the same for many years in terms of the active top-down process, and that has been very beneficial to ourselves, and more importantly, to our clients. As an active investment manager, we are always trying to refine and enhance our process; the integration of ESG factors and other sustainable and responsible investment pillars helps to deliver additional insights which can in turn improve our assessment in relation to investment risks and rewards.

Next steps for you

• Download SFDR disclosure documents: The Article 8 pre-contractual disclosures are available via The Zurich Fund Guide. The Article 10 Web Disclosures are also live and available at zurich.ie/responsibleinvestment
• Speak to us: For further information on Zurich’s commitment to Responsible Investment speak to your Zurich Broker Consultant
• Visit our Responsible Investment online hub: zurich.ie/responsibleinvestment