Our Approach to Sustainability

At MetLife Investment Management (MIM), we believe that sustainability is important. We are a top 20 institutional investment manager with $571 billion total assets under management - as such, we are aware that we can have a positive impact on our people, communities and clients by focusing on sustainability matters. We are also the institutional asset manager of MetLife, Inc, which has a 155-year history of helping people around the world protect their finances and build for the future. We are guided by MetLife’s commitment to be a greater force for good in the world.

As a well-established global investment manager, we believe Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors can have an impact on investment performance and are important considerations to effectively manage risk and achieve our clients’ investment objectives. Our investment teams across public fixed income, real estate and private capital are responsible for incorporating financially-material ESG factors into their investment processes. This is a key part of how we aim to deliver client solutions that manage risk and create sustainable investment returns.

We also engage actively with company leadership. Our investment analysts frequently interact and engage in discussions with a firm’s senior management throughout the initial due diligence process and as part of the portfolio monitoring process. We maintain an ongoing dialogue with company management to target improvements across a number of sustainability metrics.
 

Investing for a Positive Impact

In 2022, MIM acquired Affirmative Investment Management (AIM), a specialist global environmental, social and corporate governance fixed income investment manager. AIM’s capabilities in impact investing, verification, reporting and engagement strengthen MIM’s ESG investment and reporting capabilities and provide deeper analysis of sustainability and risk considerations across our core competencies in public fixed income, private fixed income and real estate. AIM has received a Morningstar ESG Commitment Level of Leader as a firm.  Out of 94 asset managers assessed by Morningstar in this assessment, published in December 2022, only eight managers were awarded this highest classification of Leader. Morningstar said that AIM is an ESG Leader and ‘sets an ESG standard to aspire to’. Read the full report and methodology.