Using sustainable investment criteria alongside traditional financial analysis could offer a powerful way to uncover new investing opportunities; help better evaluate and manage risk; and align your investments to what matters most to you while seeking competitive returns.
Our approach
The world is rapidly progressing. Technological innovation across nearly every industry, from energy to infrastructure, is transforming the way we live and do business. It’s also presenting significant investment opportunities with those companies leading on the innovation front that are well positioned to grow.
Our suite of sustainable and impact investing solutions can help you invest in the momentum of this changing world with investments that incorporate sustainability analysis alongside traditional financial analysis to identify opportunities and potentially mitigate risks that could affect a company’s profitability. And if you’re looking to align your investments to your personal sustainability and impact preferences while pursuing competitive returns, we can help you do that too.
The Chief Investment Office Investment Manager Selection team evaluates sustainable strategies and narrows down investments to those with a high probability of meeting or outperforming objectives.
Our Chief Investment Office due diligence process
For sustainable investing strategies, we apply the same investment standards that we use for traditional strategies and then apply a second set of standards to ensure the strategy also meets our sustainability criteria, including the ability to measure and report on impact results or sustainable goals.
Quantitative review: We look at historical performance and risk compared to the market to ensure an unbiased, numbers-based evaluation of each investment manager.
Qualitative review: We go beyond numbers to look at investment manager credentials, investment processes and risk management approaches with the goal of identifying the best-in-class advisors.
Rigorous governance & oversight: A final, ongoing evaluation is conducted by multiple oversight committees — helping identify the highest-conviction strategies to offer our clients.
The same investment standards as traditional investments, along with a second set of standards, are applied to sustainable investments to help ensure the strategy also meets our sustainability criteria, including the ability to measure and report on impact results or sustainable goals.
- Quantitative review: We look at historical performance and risk compared to the market for an unbiased, numbers-based evaluation of each investment manager.
- Qualitative review: We go beyond numbers to look at investment manager credentials, investment processes and risk management approaches with the goal of identifying the best-in-class practitioners.
- Rigorous governance & oversight: A final, human evaluation is conducted by multiple oversight committees — helping identify the highest-conviction strategies to offer our clients.
Aligning your portfolio to your personal preferences to create positive change
Sustainable and impact investing allows you to align your investments to your personal preferences. By looking across three broad categories — People, Planet and Principles of Governance — we can help you choose investing strategies that are focused on driving positive change in the world.
- People: Commitment to engaged and healthy workers and sustainable communities
- Planet: Contributions to climate and environmental sustainability
- Principles of Governance: Commitment to corporate ethics and societal benefit
Bank of America’s commitment to responsible growth
As one of the world’s largest financial institutions, we take a key role in building a more resilient future. Through our strategy of responsible growth, we are guided by a common purpose to help make financial lives better.
One of the ways we drive Responsible Growth is through our work to serve our clients’ financial needs, including those clients helping deliver more secure, affordable and sustainable energy.
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This information should not be construed as investment advice and is subject to change. It is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to be either a specific offer by Bank of America, Merrill or any affiliate to sell or provide, or a specific invitation for a consumer to apply for, any particular retail financial product or service that may be available.
The Chief Investment Office (CIO) provides thought leadership on wealth management, investment strategy and global markets; portfolio management solutions; due diligence; and solutions oversight and data analytics. CIO viewpoints are developed for Bank of America Private Bank, a division of Bank of America, N.A., (“Bank of America”) and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated (“MLPF&S” or “Merrill”), a registered broker-dealer, registered investment adviser, Member SIPC and a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of America Corporation (“BofA Corp.”).
There are many factors to take into consideration when building an investment portfolio and it's important to remember Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors are only one component to potentially consider and should always be used alongside fundamental analysis.
Sustainable and Impact Investing and/or Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) managers may take into consideration factors beyond traditional financial information to select securities, which could result in relative investment performance deviating from other strategies or broad market benchmarks, depending on whether such sectors or investments are in or out of favor in the market. Further, ESG strategies may rely on certain values based criteria to eliminate exposures found in similar strategies or broad market benchmarks, which could also result in relative investment performance deviating.
Risk management and due diligence processes seek to mitigate, but cannot eliminate risk, nor do they imply low risk.
