Exclusions & Ethical

Sparinvest has well over a decade of experience in screening funds and applying exclusionary filters.

Details on Exclusions and Ethical Fund Criteria may be found in our statement on Methodologies related to Sustainable Investments.

General Exclusions

A general set of exclusion criteria is applied to all funds, based on three main categories:

  • Controversial Weapons
  • Persistent Norm Violators
  • Climate Laggards

To see Sparinvest’s lists of companies excluded from all funds, click here.

Additionally, exclusions are applied to government bonds issued by countries that fail to pass our country screening process.

Fund Specific Exclusions

Some funds apply additional exclusionary criteria.

Details on these criteria, including relevant thresholds, may be found in our statement on Methodologies related to Sustainable Investments. Typically, these funds exclude companies based on violations of international norms and involvement in certain sectors.

Norms-based

We exclude companies based on violations of international norms for human rights, labour relations, the environment, and anti-corruption.

The underlying norms stem from frameworks such as the UN Global Compact, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, ILO conventions, and OECD guidelines.

Sector-based

Based on revenue exposure, we have zero tolerance for production and max 5% tolerance distribution, of:

Sector

*zero tolerance of production or distribution of combat weapons; 5% tolerance for production or distribution of other military equipment

Climate-based

Climate change is perhaps the single most significant ESG issue and naturally, this is reflected in our integration of ESG considerations into our investment processes and stewardship efforts.

In our Ethical range of funds, our climate-related exclusionary criteria are based on consultation with clients in the different funds regarding their preferred balance between stewardship and exclusion of companies that are lagging in their response to the climate emergency. Our funds use combinations of the following exclusion categories: 

Climate

**Exposure is typically assessed on the basis of revenue or production thresholds. To read more about how individual funds apply these exclusionary criteria, see Sparinvest Exclusions and Ethical Fund Criteria To see Sparinvest’s list of excluded companies, click here