Saturna Sustainable Equity Fund
Ticker: SEEFX
Est. 2015
Seeks capital appreciation by investing in equities of issuers located throughout the world that we believe demonstrate sustainable characteristics.
Saturna Sustainable Bond Fund
Ticker: SEBFX
Est. 2015
Seeks current income and capital preservation by investing bonds of issuers located throughout the world that we believe demonstrate sustainable characteristics.
Sustainable Investment Process
We are committed to analyzing an issuer’s strength through a holistic lens, which we believe should include how a company addresses the key sustainability factors that materially impact its industry. At Saturna Capital, our sustainable investment process is rigorous and thorough. We have developed a proprietary scoring system based on the Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDGs), which assesses how well a company performs relative to a blend of its industry, sector, and country peers in each sustainability category.
Positive Screening Criteria
We positively screen for issuers with low sustainability-risk profiles, which feature competitive performance in:
Material and non-financial sustainability considerations
- Low carbon emissions
- Water usage
- Renewable energy
- Fair labor and supply chain practices
Business practices and performance
- Management stability and diversity
- Low debt
- Strong balance sheets
- High-quality operations
- Long-term focus
- High-quality reporting
Negative Screening Criteria
Saturna’s negative screening excludes firms engaged in:
- Alcohol
- Tobacco
- Weapons
- Pornography
- Gambling
- Fossil fuel extraction
Our Sustainable Funds support the fossil fuel divestment campaign by excluding energy extraction and refining companies.
Comparative Assessment
While the quantitative sustainable scoring process provides an invaluable stock identification tool, we conduct detailed, careful analysis to avoid the numerous pitfalls that challenge quantitative sustainability scoring. It is important that we identify and consider factors such as “large-capitalization bias” — smaller companies, even good actors, may lack the resources to provide detailed sustainability metrics. For this reason, further qualitative analysis is essential for accurate assessment.
In order to assess the relevance of the data used to generate our scores, we carefully examine the quantity and quality of reporting for each scoring factor, including how the reporting varies — both in response rates and the distribution of reported data — by industry, sector, country, and region.
Our belief in active management from a financial perspective applies equally to our sustainability analysis.