Amundi CEO Valérie Baudson has revealed plans to almost double the number of ESG ETFs in its range by 2025 as she outlined the asset manager’s strategic plans for the next three years.
Announcing its ESG Plan 2025 last week, Baudson said it was targeting 40% of its ETF range to be made up of its ESG ETFs by the deadline, up from 23% currently.
Europe’s largest asset manager currently has over 150 ETF products with assets under management of €55bn.
The plans come amid a huge push from European asset managers to capitalise on the boom in ESG investing as regulatory measures crawl towards implementation.
Earlier this month, ETF Stream revealed Amundi’s French rival BNP Paribas Asset Management underwent a major overhaul of its ESG range, taking its total assets classified as either Article 8 or 9 under SFDR to 83% of its product range, with a view to having 100% classified by early 2022.
Amundi said the passive plans were part of its wider ESG ambition which also included introducing an “environmental transition rating” assessing companies decarbonising efforts across €400bn of its actively managed funds.
It added it wanted to hit €20bn AUM in impact funds, investing in companies that seek positive environmental and social performance.
In a bid to achieve these goals, Baudson said the firm will be linking ESG performance objectives with the remuneration of 200 senior executives as well as all portfolio managers and sales representatives.
It added it will work with 1000 additional companies to define their strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, voting at their annual general meetings and aligning remuneration packages with the strategies.
The group said it voted at over 4,000 annual general meetings and initiated a dialogue on climate change with 472 companies between 2018 and 2021.
Furthermore, Amundi stressed it would exclude companies across its portfolios that generate over 30% of their activity from unconventional oil and gas production while aiming to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30%.
“We commit to going even further to help accelerate the transformation of our society and its economic players,” Baudson said.
“Our new ESG Plan 2025 is even more demanding and aims to align all of our stakeholders: investors, companies, employees and shareholders. The acceleration of our ESG commitments will be Amundi's primary growth lever around the world."
The plans were outlined ahead of Amundi’s €825m acquisition of Lyxor which broke through the €100bn AUM barrier earlier this month.
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