We believe investors should not have to sacrifice their core values to meet their financial goals, so we created the Blue Heron Portfolios to offer Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) for our clients.
The flexibility of the AMA discretionary managed portfolio system has allowed us to be innovative in our thinking and launch these portfolios that focus on sustainable investing. In a dynamic, interconnected world, there is no "simply getting rid of stocks, bonds or investment funds that are unethical or morally ambiguous," We developed tough screening criteria – our Blue Heron Investment Principles – which constitute a methodology to remove subjectivity from our Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) screening and create a reasonable, objective, and repeatable means to identify better companies and build better portfolios.
Our diversified, blue-chip, sustainable portfolios are distinct from more traditional SRIs. For example, we don't just screen out companies that produce cluster bombs or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). We screen in companies that, for example, invest in the wellbeing of their employees or protect biodiversity. Our positive screening allows your core portfolio to be invested in only the most committed, innovative and sustainable companies. We did not divest from fossil fuel extractors - our tough ESG screening process left almost none to own. Faced with the results of our screening, we surmised that this mass exclusion indicated something about the industry was higher risk than generally accepted, so we chose to exclude fossil fuel extractors from our investable universe and thus from our portfolios.
However, in the Blue Heron portfolios, the users of fossil fuels are given the same scrutiny as the extractors – as they should – because they and their customers shoulder an inordinate amount of the risk in this energy transition. Carbon taxes are nascent and will fall ultimately on the consumers of the resource rather than the extractor, thus effective management of supply chain and efficiency is of paramount importance. This tough level of environmental, social and corporate governance scrutiny does not end at the fossil fuel industry but is applied to all industries everywhere because ESG risk is not isolated to the issues that are currently on the front page of papers or our newsfeeds.
Our Blue Heron Portfolios come in a Global, a Canadian Focused, and Canadian Dividend Income focused options that can be used singularly or in combination to provide a core diversified portfolio to better meet your financial goals
Please explore the resources below or contact us to find out if these strategies are right for you!
Resources:
A Summary
The basics
Why we built these portfolios
Detailed Screening Process
Better Run Companies make Better investments
Carbon Intensity
