BNP Paribas Asset Management has launched the Inclusive Growth fund.

BNPP AM has restructured the BNP Paribas Human Development fund and renamed it the BNP Paribas Inclusive Growth using a new investment strategy focused on inclusive growth.

The fund aims to generate returns through investment in companies with a proactive approach to reducing inequalities in income, education, gender, ethnicity, geographic origin, age or disability. Its investment strategy is based on five causes of inequalities:

• protecting the most vulnerable members of society
• promoting social mobility
• developing a quality offering accessible to the greatest number of people
• respecting business ethics
• promoting decarbonisation and biodiversity

This methodology enables all stocks in the universe to be scored out of 100, using ESG indicators associated with a specific range of inclusive growth criteria. These include employment contracts, working conditions, equal pay, employee diversity, percentage of female managers, talent management, professional training, product and service offering for low-income consumers and executive remuneration policy.

The final ‘inclusion score’ enables the identification of companies that are inclusive growth leaders within the investment universe. It incorporates an enhanced weighting for social factors, which account for 65% of the overall score, compared to 20% for governance criteria and 15% for environmental. Companies that score below 20 are automatically excluded from the investment portfolio.