iSTOXX APG Real Estate CRREM-aligned Responsible Investment Index series has been launched by APG Asset Management. In collaboration with RepRisk, an ESG data science company.
“We are excited to provide our AI-powered and fast-moving data to accelerate innovation in the indices landscape,” said Alexandra Mihailescu Cichon, chief commercial officer at RepRisk. “The incorporation of holistic ESG and business conduct considerations into index construction and investment decision-making points to a larger trend of ease-of-access to sustainable choices. We are proud to be working with APG on this pioneering series and to empower clients with more choices.
Rutger van der Lubbe, head of global real estate investment strategy at APG, said, “At APG, we are constantly innovating and investigating more responsible options for our clients. Today’s launch of our APG Real Estate CRREM-aligned RI Index strategy underlines our adherence to the highest ESG standards across the industry. Through our partnership with RepRisk we can develop our client offering, to be more sustainable and, importantly, customized.”
The iSTOXX APG Real Estate CRREM-aligned Responsible Investment Index allows an active ESG component to customize sustainability criteria. It is constructed using APG’s methodology and blends RepRisk data with other data to create custom indices that can be designed to suit client-sustainability requirements. In particular, RepRisk’s ESG and business conduct risk data is used as an input for decisions, allowing companies to include or exclude, monitoring of target companies, and calculating adjustments to the indices.
The index series brings features that were previously unavailable in the passive investment real estate index landscape. It is guided by APG’s mission to create real estate index series comprising companies with less exposure to ESG risk and fitting particular sustainability criteria, like those outlined by SFDR Article 8 and various sustainability frameworks, such as the Global ESG Benchmark for Real Assets, the Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor Project, the Sustainable Development Goals, and APG’s proprietary Controversy Screening.