Monday, 19 October 2021
Written by Royce Tan, Chief Market Insights Officer of GAX MD
PETALING JAYA, 19th October 2021 – MYTHEO, one of the leading digital investment management platforms in Malaysia, has become the first in the country to launch a fully AI-based ESG-themed portfolio, known as the MYTHEO Global ESG.
The portfolio will invest primarily in ESG-related equity ETFs, particularly those that has an investment policy of taking into consideration the environment, social and corporate governance such as having a right balance of executives and directors with strong elements of gender and racial diversity, strict anti-corruption policies and strong internal controls in place. This will allow investors to align their financial goals with the values that they strongly believe in as they start to look beyond balance sheets and profit or loss statements to identify investments that are responsible and sustainable.
The Global Sustainable Investment Alliance (GSIA), in its latest Global Sustainable Investment Review (GSIR) biennial report, revealed an increase of 15% in the assets under management (AUM) of sustainable investments from USD30.68 trillion in 2018 to USD35.50 trillion in 2020. It also projected that ESG assets could exceed USD50 trillion by 2025. China and countries in the Asia-Pacific region are expected to contribute double digit compounded annual growth of responsible investment markets in the near future.
Ronnie Tan, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Managing Director of GAX MD Sdn Bhd, said the rollout of the MYTHEO Global ESG was timely as investments in the ESG space is gaining momentum, at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic laid bare social and economic issues, which further strengthened the need for more sustainability practices and good governance.
“We are very excited to introduce our latest portfolio, the MYTHEO Global ESG. We wanted to provide a mechanism to contribute to the realisation of a sustainable society through digital investment management for investors who wish for a healthier future environment, a just and equitable society, sustainable corporate practices, and good governance.
“There is a need to balance between social and economic returns. We believe that a company with high ESG and corporate values can expect to achieve good economic returns over the long term,” he said.
Tan added that funds with ESG mandates have demonstrated resilience in times of market uncertainties, especially due to the outbreak of Covid-19 last year. Quoting figures from Refinitiv Lipper, he said ESG-related funds delivered an average higher overall outperformance of 3.78% as compared to 2.15% for conventional funds for the year 2020.
The MYTHEO Global ESG portfolio currently has 11 ETFs in its investing universe with an exposure of 49.95% in the United States and 50.05% globally. The performance for this ESG portfolio was back-tested all the way to July 2006, which yielded an annualised net return of 9.27% as compared to the MSCI ACWI Index at 8.93%. It should be noted that the past performance is not an indication of future performance.
Existing MYTHEO investors can create a new portfolio for the MYTHEO Global ESG using their existing accounts. For investors that are new to MYTHEO, log on to mytheo.my to get started or download the MYTHEO app from the App Store of Play Store. Invest in a moment with MYTHEO today!
About MYTHEO
MYTHEO is a digital investment management (DIM) service or a robo-advisor that offers automated discretionary portfolio management services to investors.
MYTHEO is a product of GAX MD Sdn Bhd, a joint-venture between Silverlake Digital INX Sdn Bhd (a member of the Silverlake Group) and Japanese fintech firm Money Design Ltd, that pioneered the robo-advisory industry in Japan with THEO.
GAX MD was granted a Capital Markets Services License by the Securities Commission Malaysia to carry out the regulated activities of fund management in relation to digital investment management in May 2019.
MYTHEO uses a proprietary algorithm which generates optimised portfolios for each investor based on their profile, individual income and risk appetite.
Its investing universe consists of 61 ETFs, that includes over 10,000 underlying securities, making MYTHEO the one with the most diverse offerings and range of asset classes compared to other robo-advisors in Malaysia.
As a group, THEO in Japan and MYTHEO in Malaysia manages over US$1.5 billion in AUM from over 120,000 investors.
