Strengthening our commitment to responsible ownership

We believe climate change is one of the most significant long-term risks to our investment portfolio – and therefore our members’ retirement savings. An important first step on our path to a low-carbon economy is to divest from businesses that derive more than 10% of their revenue directly from mining thermal or energy coal from 1 October 20201.
Not only does responsible ownership give us an opportunity to optimise our members’ retirement savings, it also allows us to positively contribute to the world in which our members live and retire. From 1 October 2020, we’ll also be excluding direct investments in companies that make money from the manufacture and/or production of controversial weapons, including chemical weapons, cluster munitions, land mines
and depleted uranium1.
For more on our approach to responsible investing, go to aware.com.au/responsibleinvesting
1 The exclusion doesn’t apply to the use of derivatives which may have an indirect exposure to these types of companies. In addition, implementation of the exclusion may be affected by the accessibility and accuracy of data, or an error by an external service provider. This may result in inadvertent holdings, typically over the short term, in investments we are seeking to exclude.