ESG assets under management

By the end of 2016, Deutsche Asset Management reported €9.9 billion of assets under management (AuM) (including overlays) incorporating ESG criteria (2015: €10 billion). Deutsche Asset Management managed assets with a volume of €706 billion (December 31, 2016).

We follow industry standards and guidelines in classifying ESG AuM. Investor reporting to the Global Sustainable Investment Association (GSIA)—through their regional membership organizations such as EuroSIF, USSIF, and UKSIF—has become a global standard for categorizing ESG assets. These encompass negative exclusion screens, positive best-in-class screens, norms-based screens, the integration of ESG factors, sustainability-themed investing, impact investing, and corporate engagement and shareholder action.

In 2016 we applied the GSIA guidelines for ESG reporting to re-categorize 20 existing institutional mandates as including ESG exclusion policies or following a best-in-class approach. As a result of this exercise we removed four thematic funds from the list because these did not have a consistent ESG filter. Some new mandates were created, and others closed, and there was a net inflow into existing funds/mandates. To enable comparability, we re-calculated the 2015 ESG AuM using our new categorization.