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AllianzGI launches its Impact Research Award

  • Impact Research Award is designed to recognise the critical role of independent academic studies
  • AllianzGI Sustainable Investing and Stewardship Report 2024 is published today

23.04.2025 | Allianz Global Investors (AllianzGI), one of the world’s leading active investment managers, has announced today the launch of its Impact Research Award – designed to recognise the critical role that independent academic studies play in its impact due diligence process, which forms an important component of AllianzGI’s impact framework for private markets asset classes.

AllianzGI’s impact investments intentionally target positive, measurable environment or social outcomes – alongside financial returns – by investing in companies delivering goods and services that seek to provide solutions to key environmental or social problems. To qualify an investment as an impact investment, the company developed a proprietary impact framework for private markets asset classes. A key component of the framework is to use the best available data and research to understand a company’s potential impact contribution. Independent academic studies form a core part of the evidence base for AllianzGI’s proprietary impact framework for private markets asset classes.

The inaugural 2024 Impact Research Award was presented to Associate Professor Taren Sanders, Program Leader in the Motivation and Behaviour Research  Program at the Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, who led a review of meta-analyses to further our understanding of the effects of screen use on education and health outcomes for children and adolescents. His paper, “An umbrella review of the benefits and risks associated with youths’ interactions with electronic screens”, found that there can be both positive and negative outcomes associated with screen use. Focusing simply on the amount of time spent with screens is less helpful than understanding the form of screen use, what content is consumed, and whether or not it is supervised.

Matt Christensen

Matt Christensen, Global Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing comments: “By establishing this annual award, we hope to encourage more research in areas of focus for impact investing. The aim is to continuously improve our investment selection process and thereby help to increase the positive impact of our work alongside the generation of financial returns. We hope that such research will also benefit the impact investing ecosystem more broadly, such that over time, increasing amounts of capital will flow towards more impactful investment opportunities”

AllianzGI also published today its Sustainable Investing and Stewardship Report 2024 that highlights the progress over the past year in how AllianzGI delivered sustainable outcomes for its clients and other stakeholders and lays out the company’s intentions for 2025.

Matt Christensen adds: “Our outcomes in 2024 reflect a year of evolution, rather than revolution, as we continued to deliver with conviction against our long-term strategy. After many years of action on sustainable investing, the highlights below provide us with the confidence that this strategy is working. In 2025, with the recent developments in the United States, we need to continue ensuring that sustainable investing demonstrates value and becomes even more tangible for clients”

The report highlights 2024 key developments: 

  • In 2024, AllianzGI reached EUR 222bn combined AuM in sustainability- and impact-focused strategies. More than 211 mutual funds are currently classified as a sustainable fund equalling 64% of its mutual fund AuM[1]. Over the year there were strong net cash inflows into Allianz Best Styles SRI funds and Allianz Dynamic Multi Asset Strategy SRI funds showcasing the market’s confidence in AllianzGI’ different sustainable investing approaches.
  • Over the past year, the Impact Strategy team established a new impact data management system improving how it monitor impact key performance indicators for portfolio companies. By launching its first Impact Private Credit strategy in 2024 AllianzGI became one of the first pureplay impact credit players in Europe. Already in September the fund held its first closing at EUR 560 million reaching more than half of its target size.
  • In order to transition to a more resilient economy it is not enough to simply invest in the companies leading the way. There is also a need to challenge and engage those that are making less progress. In 2024, AllianzGI was able to increase the number of those engagements by 26% to a total of 605 talking to 460 companies in 39 locations globally. As in the year before, the company continued to be vocal on its proxy voting and pre-announced a number of voting decisions. For the first time AllianzGI co-filed a shareholder resolution at McDonald’s 2024 annual general meeting which resulted in a constructive dialogue and a successful outcome.

AllianzGI’s Sustainable Investing and Stewardship Report 2024 also looks ahead and outlines aspirations for 2025. AllianzGI will continue to offer concrete solutions and tools that support its clients’ sustainability ambitions, playing its part in driving the transition agenda across our industry and transforming data into insights.

To access the report: 
Sustainable investing and stewardship report 2024 | Allianz Global Investors

For further information please contact:

Marion Leblanc-Wohrer
Tel: +33 6 85 15 74 54
Email: Marion.leblancwohrer@allianzgi.com

 

About Allianz Global Investors:

Allianz Global Investors is a leading active asset manager with over 600 investment professionals in over 20 offices worldwide and managing EUR 560 billion in assets. We invest for the long term and seek to generate value for clients every step of the way. We do this by being active – in how we partner with clients and anticipate their changing needs, and build solutions based on capabilities across public and private markets. Our focus on protecting and enhancing our clients’ assets leads naturally to a commitment to sustainability to drive positive change. Our goal is to elevate the investment experience for clients, whatever their location or objectives.

Data as at 31 December. Total assets under management are assets or securities portfolios, valued at current market value, for which Allianz Global Investors companies are responsible vis-á-vis clients for providing discretionary investment management decisions and portfolio management, either directly or via a sub-advisor (these include Allianz Global Investors assets which are now sub-advised by Voya IM since 25 July 2022). This excludes assets for which Allianz Global Investors companies are primarily responsible for administrative services only. Assets under management are managed on behalf of third parties as well as on behalf of the Allianz Group.

Please note that “Sustainability-focused” and “Impact-focused” are Allianz Global Investors product categories. Reference to a fund being within them does not indicate that fund has a “Sustainability Focus” or “Sustainability Impact” label under the United Kingdom’s Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR).

 

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