UBS Irish MMFs Now Sustainable
A communication entitled, "Registration of UBS (Irl) Select Money Market Fund - EUR, GBP, USD Sustainable to SFDR Article 8" from UBS Asset Management and subtitled, "Sustainability Focused funds under the SFDR," explains "On March 10, 2021 the European Union put the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) into force for EU countries, which brings our Luxembourg and Irish Domiciled funds in scope. This regulation is in accordance with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement. The SFDR taxonomy aims to make the sustainability profile of funds across the EU more comparable, and systematically integrate sustainability aspects into the financial services market. Please find below a short review." A Q&A asks, "Why now?" They write, "UBS-AM has reviewed the overall fund range to align with the new SFDR taxonomy (classification) which has been implemented in 2021. In so doing a number of Funds have been re-categorized as Article 8, including the UBS (Irl) Select Money Market Funds in EUR, GBP and USD (US Treasury is out of scope of this exercise). SFDR has been put in place to harmonise Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) categorisation of funds and provide investors with better transparency in comparing ESG characteristics across funds." The brief also asks, "To what extent is ESG analysis being integrated in these funds?" UBS answers, "ESG analysis across most of UBS-AM's Fixed Income and Liquidity capabilities has been integrated in the investment process for many years, with issuer-level ESG analysis as guided by UBS-AM's approach to ESG research and evaluation methodology. This has involved developing a proprietary ESG risk dashboard that combines scores and data points from several external research providers together with our internal ESG score. Our credit research teams continually monitor individual issuers to assure high credit quality, and partner closely with our dedicated Sustainable and Impact Investing Research team to maintain focused ESG integration in the research process. This formal re-categorisation brings our existing ESG integrated funds within the SFDR regulation." The update asks, "What's changed in the UBS (Irl) Select Money Market Funds?" They explain, "The most visible change is to the name where the fund names in EUR, GBP and USD have updated to UBS (Irl) Select Money Market Fund – Sustainable; No changes to the Total Expense Ratios of the share classes of the fund in the prospectus; No change in how active portfolio managers incorporate analyst recommendations into portfolio construction; No impact to liquidity of the funds; No current impact to yields; and, The UBS (Irl) Select Money Market Funds – Sustainable continue to be managed with the objective, seeking to maximise current income consistent with the preservation of principal, high levels of liquidity whilst now promoting environmental, social and governance characteristics." (Note: Ask us if you'd like to see our latest Money Fund Intelligence International, which tracks European and "offshore" money market funds denominated in USD, EUR and GBP, or our MFI International Portfolio Holdings dataset. These funds are not available to U.S. investors.)
