RAM Active Investments SA (“RAM AI”), a systematic asset manager based in Geneva, is launching a fund with the objective to tackle the climate emergency and to provide investors an active strategy with strong ESG standards. RAM AI’s innovative ESG approach is the result of extensive research exploring alternative data thanks to the successful development of the RAM AI Machine Learning (ML) infrastructure.
As the Climate Change emergency continues to grow RAM AI believes its role as an asset manager is to provide investors with a differentiated solution to low-carbon investing. Emmanuel Hauptmann who heads the Systematic Equity research shares: “The RAM ML team has made tremendous advances in building the strategy with the objective to provide a selection of best-in-class, low-carbon companies without compromising performance.”
While many managers opt for a unidimensional approach to climate change within portfolios by reducing the weight of the worst polluters, RAM AI’s sustainable alpha approach aims to leverage a myriad of ESG and non-ESG data sources to identify the most attractive sustainable return opportunities in each industry. Nicolas Jamet, who leads the research efforts on ESG integration adds: “Our research effort is based on hypothesis testing; understanding how the ESG profile of a given company impacts, not only future stock performance, but also current/future fundamentals and ultimately financial returns.”
Thanks to a robust Machine Learning infrastructure, RAM AI applies a systematic process to select companies combining financial and ESG data, with both structured and unstructured (i.e. news-flow) inputs. To learn more about how AI is used to integrate unstructured ESG news-flow on companies to improve selection, please read our latest publication on the topic: A Natural Language Processing (NLP) based framework for ESG Integration.
RAM AI is excited about this development and sees it as a cornerstone to its commitment and long-term alignment towards the SDGs. The cross-fertilisation of ideas within the RAM research team will lead to more innovation across products using ESG data and NLP techniques to improve the alpha prediction.
The Fund is available in a UCITS format as of the 9th of July 2020 to investors in Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, United Kingdom, Singapore and Japan. The fund is currently in the process of being registered in Switzerland. RAM AI will also aim to offset the Fund’s (low) carbon emissions (Scopes I and II) using carbon compensation certificates (CERs) in accordance with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) rules at no additional cost to investors.
