Expressing religious values in investment portfolios

Consultant’s client needed a portfolio that adhered to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Socially Responsible Investment (USCCB SRI) Guidelines.  Aperio developed a custom Catholic portfolio to track the Russell 3000.    

Challenge

The client engaged a consultant to help find an investment portfolio that adhered to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Socially Responsible Investment (USCCB SRI) Guidelines. Client expressed concerns at the costs and performance issues of off-the-shelf actively managed Catholic funds. The consultant reached out to Aperio to design a solution.

Aperio solution

Aperio optimized the securities that passed the USCCB SRI screens to create a portfolio with low tracking error to the Russell 3000. Aperio worked with the consultant, client and information provided by KLD to establish an appropriate set of screened names. Screened names were then optimized to achieve a 0.59% tracking error to the Russell 3000 benchmark.
Aperio also implemented proxy voting to match the targeted value set.

Impact

Client achieved a custom Catholic Values portfolio with standard benchmark returns.