Human rights

Anthos’ value of human dignity encompasses its commitment to human rights. We recognise the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and seek to adopt it as our standard.

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Human dignity is a basic human right: universal, inviolable and inalienable. We use the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) as a framework to safeguard human dignity and follow the UDHR. As a fund-of-funds asset manager, we strive to exclude weapons, tobacco, gambling and adult entertainment from our investments because of their negative impact on human rights and human dignity. Where we cannot, we use our exclusion policy and thresholds to send the strongest possible signals to our external managers, which we combine with dialogue to bring about change.

1

Understand

In 2022, we took our first steps to developing our human rights commitment. In order to understand the issue and develop Anthos’ position on human rights, we first sought expert advice from our network of managers deemed leaders in human rights practices. We then created a number of workshops together with the leading expert on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, SHIFT, to develop our knowledge and position on this topic. By the end of the year, we had published our first Human Rights Statement, as a commitment to further strengthen our capacity to respect human rights from the different roles we have as an employer, business owner, through to our investments.  


Our statement includes our initial plan from 2022 to 2025 and the steps we believe we should take. We are sure that we will learn a lot on the way and we invite our stakeholders to join us on this path. 

2

Implement  

Our intentions, as laid out in our Human Rights Statement are to: 

  • Publish a Human Rights policy 
  • Update current tools for external managers selection in due diligence and monitoring (via our ESG and IMP scorecard) 
  • Organise training for engagement with our external managers 
  • Galvanise client support for human rights policy and implementation where needed 

3

Influence 

Our intentions, as laid out in our Human Rights Statement are to: 

  • Report according to UNGPs Reporting Framework 
  • Set targets for external managers engagement and outcomes 
  • Continue improving tools and engagement 
  • Continue training, reporting and organising events 

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Investments in action

How to read this table

The ‘Anthos emissions’ dots represent Anthos’ reported emissions which make up 40% of total assets under management and encompasses listed equities and listed corporate debt (European investment grade and global high yield). The ‘budgeting line’ represents the maximum threshold of emissions to enable these portfolios to reach net-zero. The ‘baseline’ and ‘budgeting point’ labels represent the threshold emissions we calculated for these portfolios to reach net-zero – our carbon budget. The ‘compensation area’ from 2040 onwards represents the expectation that we will need to offset any remaining emissions using natural capital solutions. ‘Benchmarks’ represents the total emissions of the respective benchmarks for the equities and listed debt portfolios: MSCI World ACWI, Bloomberg Barclays Euro agg, and Bloomberg Barclays Global high yield, respectively.

Human dignity

Partnership or allianceActivity and rationale
United Nations’ Principles for Responsible investment (PRI)Anthos has been a signatory since 2019. In 2022, we endorsed the human rights engagement initiative ‘Advance’ and joined asset-class specific working groups.
SHIFTWe partnered with them throughout 2022 to enhance our human rights approach.
Investor Alliance for Human Rights (investorsforhumanrights.org)We joined this initiative to learn and align with other investors on the same path. We advised them for our human rights statement for example, next to SHIFT.

Good corporate citizenship 

Partnership or allianceActivity and rationale
SFDR working group organised by the Dutch Fund and Asset Management AssociationWe actively participate in the SFDR expert sessions and initiated an expert group for SFDR implementation for funds of funds. We also contribute via DUFAS in the industry relevant consultations regarding EU policy developments.
Impact FrontiersOver 2022, we participate in a working group with other funds and fund-of-funds to share best practices in integrating the IMP norms in investing, determining investor contribution, sharing knowledge, etc.
Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN)We took part in their annual conference, speaking about investing for systemic change. We are also members of their investor advisory council.