MAPFRE presents its sustainable funds to more than 190 individual shareholders

We invest based on principles, we convince based on profitability. MAPFRE assumes that it is not only seeking financial dividends, but also social dividends. This was made clear by Fernando Mata, MAPFRE's CFO and Member of the Board, during yesterday's presentation of the Group's main business figures to more than 190 registered individual shareholders. It was also attended by José Luis Jiménez, the Group's Chief Investment Officer, and Felipe Navarro, Director of Capital Markets, Investor Relations and Treasury. More precisely, this statement served as a reminder of the company's commitment to sustainability and was used as an opportunity to inform these shareholders of the company's investment strategy based on environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria.

MAPFRE has been carrying out this transparency exercise with individual shareholders since 2017, but, due to circumstances caused by the pandemic, it has been carried out online in recent quarters. In these four years, the Group has already held more than ten meetings, both in this format and in person in Madrid and Barcelona. Yesterday's meeting focused specifically on the ESG strategy implemented through MAPFRE AM, the group's asset manager, which has more than 40 billion in assets under management. The person in charge of presenting it to the shareholders was José Luis Jiménez, who recalled that MAPFRE, which has an investment team of more than 150 professionals and manages money in 26 countries, "is probably the largest institutional investor in Spain and one of the largest in Europe".

For some years now, MAPFRE has been focusing on ESG criteria, which are not only applied to new products launched by the management company, but also to most of the group's balance sheet. "We are one of the leading companies in this. And it's not new to us. In 1965, CSR was already incorporated into the company's founding statutes. It was already in MAPFRE's DNA that part of the wealth we generated had to be returned to the society that had allowed us to generate it. We see this on a daily basis in our decision-making, and we look for these principles that we uphold in other companies in which we invest," he adds.

In addition, he emphasized that MAPFRE AM has already signed the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2017 and, recently, and after passing a rigorous audit, has received the prestigious SRI seal awarded by the French Ministry of Finance for two of its funds. In fact, it is the only Spanish fund manager to hold this recognition. "We have started to measure the impact of our investments and, in addition, we have a methodology in collaboration with Harvard University and Siena University," he explained.

MAPFRE also has a Responsible Investment (RI) Framework, which is reviewed periodically in this area. Currently, nearly 90% of the assets on the balance sheet have high or very high ESG ratings.

The management took the opportunity to present to shareholders three of MAPFRE's products that meet these criteria: MAPFRE AM Capital Responsable, MAPFRE AM Inclusion Responsable and the recently launched Unit linked Multifondos Compromiso ESG.

In more detail, MAPFRE AM Inclusion Responsable, which includes in its portfolio those companies that are committed to the labor inclusion of people with disabilities, places special emphasis on the "S" for Social, a segment in which, according to Jiménez, not much work has yet been done.  "We think that the social part still needs to be established. The regulation focuses its attention on the environmental aspect. The industry is moving in a sustainable way towards including these non-financial aspects, but we have a long way to go," he concluded.