Truvalue wins Brunel Pension Partnership ESG contract

Truvalue Labs, a San Francisco-based AI-driven environmental, social and governance (ESG) data company, has been appointed by the UK’s Brunel Pension Partnership to evaluate the ESG and reputational risks across all of Brunel’s external fund managers and their holdings for listed equities and bonds.

Brunel was the first of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) funds to become a signatory to the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investing (PRI) and has, in partnership with its client funds, “embedded ESG considerations into all of its decision-making processes,” said Faith Ward, chief responsible investment officer at Brunel.

“Responsible investment is central to how Brunel fulfils its fiduciary duty,” Ward stated, adding that Brunel appoints managers that share the view that concentrating on the fundamental long-term performance of businesses, which includes the integration of risks, is most likely to deliver a successful long-term performance outcome.

“We like the objectivity of Truvalue Labs’ data that isn’t dependent upon what companies publish about themselves. Their timely material ESG data helps us to continually monitor the managers in our client partners’ funds and to evaluate and select new managers,” Ward continued.

Sebastian Brinkmann, managing director for Truvalue Labs in Europe, said: “We look forward to working closely with Brunel in advancing ESG research and data for better long-term investments.” It can be difficult to find data that captures the ups as well as the downsides, but Truvalue Labs covers both positive and negative aspects of companies’ ESG track records, added Helen Price, assistant investment officer at Brunel.

“We think that this combination of the long-term and momentum is a strength over other tools that may just be using a single rating,” Ward said. “We evaluated a number of providers on the market and concluded that Truvalue Labs had the tool we wanted as a primary source, both for communicating with managers and for evaluating the risks in our portfolios,” she concluded.