ESG at VanEck
Investing Today for a Brighter Future.
ESG investing is an approach to investing that drives positive environmental, social and governance (ESG) outcomes alongside financial results, aligning investment opportunities with investors’ values.
Our Responsible Investment Policy
What is ESG Investing?
ESG investing incorporates environmental, social and governance factors and ethical considerations when making investment decisions.
Environmental
Environmental criteria include energy use and impact on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, waste, pollution, natural resource conservation and animal treatment.
Social
Social criteria consider a company’s relationships with its stakeholders and includes working conditions, impact on local communities, health and safety and employee relations and diversity.
Governance
Governance includes the proper use of accurate and transparent accounting methods, fair voting, avoiding conflicts of interest and not engaging in illegal behavior.
VanEck considers ESG factors integral to its investment philosophy and processes. We believe that an improving ESG record should translate into a company’s differentiated operational strength, financial performance and prospects and have an impact on valuation. In our view, companies exhibiting strong ESG practices are more likely to be both more competitive and successful over the medium to long term.
As intentions, thinking and evidence in the ESG space continue to develop, we remain committed to identifying those factors that can provide enhanced investment opportunities for shareholders.
Our Commitment to Responsible Investment
VanEck is a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), an investor initiative in partnership with UNEP Finance Initiative and UN Global Compact. Being a signatory means that we formally agree to incorporate ESG factors and analysis into our investment processes.
Governance—“active engagement” in particular—has always been a major consideration in our research processes and our efforts to fine-tune the ESG questions to ask in each industry are ongoing. We believe that an important part of our responsibility to clients goes beyond encouraging change that can enhance, protect and provide opportunities for shareholders to meet their investment objectives. It also entails seeking to mitigate associated risks, including those related to ESG.
Active Strategies
Governance is especially important for our active emerging markets equity strategy. Companies can have higher concentrations of inside ownership and more flexible rules. With our active gold mining strategy, we rigorously monitor companies’ adherence to industry best practices and have much more meaningful interactions with company boards on ESG topics compared to 10 years ago.
Passive Strategies
We were one of the first ETF issuers to offer environmentally sustainable exposures and we continue to research how those strategies can add value to client portfolios. VanEck offers ETFs, both equity and fixed income, either with ESG- and sustainability-related themes, or approaches that employ specific screening criteria and/or indices.