Voya Investment Management Partners with Two Centuries Investments to Enhance ESG Integration in Equity Portfolios

Voya Investment Management, the asset management business of Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), recently partnered with Two Centuries Investments to enhance the integration of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors across the firm’s equity platform.

As asset owners increasingly embrace sustainable investing, Voya IM’s partnership with Two Centuries Investments represents another step in a broader commitment to help meet the evolving needs of the firm’s client base. In November 2020, Voya IM announced that it had acquired the technology and hired the founding team of G Squared Capital LLP, a London-based investment manager that is a pioneer in applying machine intelligence to fundamental investing and creating ESG-integrated equity solutions.

“With our proprietary technology and machine-learning capabilities, we certainly have the internal firepower to help our clients meet responsible investment objectives. Our partnership with Two Centuries Investments helped us better understand broader ESG themes and develop a proprietary ESG framework that was authentic, credible, and impactful. We are now integrating the framework into the quantitative models that are used across the equity platform. From that perspective, it became clear that there are very real opportunities to generate alpha on behalf of our clients,” said Vincent Costa, Head of Quantitative Equity for Voya IM.

Two Centuries Investments was founded by Mikhail Samonov, who has a long track record of building and managing socially responsible equity strategies that use innovative product design approaches and alternative data. As part of the partnership with Voya IM, Samonov offered insights that went beyond standard ESG providers and categories, for example by fostering innovation tournaments that ultimately led to a more comprehensive view of the potential for alpha generation from the increased availability of data in this space.

 “It has been an incredible experience to work with the Voya IM teams across functions to design and build out an ESG framework that aligns with the firm’s award-winning corporate socially responsibility programs. From the outset, I was impressed by the innovation mindset and focus that Voya IM brought to the project. As a result we were able to pursue a multitude of ideas, themes, and data sets, leading to promising alpha signals.

I am proud of what we have achieved together and look forward to seeing where Voya IM goes next as it continues to expand its ESG product suite.”

As ESG ratings become more formalized and standardized across the industry, Voya IM used the partnership with Two Centuries Investments to solidify and enhance a proprietary quantitative ESG scoring methodology for its Equity platform.

“Like other investment categories where ratings agencies are more established, investors should not want to develop an over-reliance on third-party ESG ratings. Instead, it makes sense to develop a proprietary approach to evaluating companies through an ESG-tinted but alpha-focused lens. At Voya IM, we believe that an effective quantitative equity strategy should be both contextual, that is, able to take into account differences across business segments, and adaptable as markets change over time. This philosophy aligns very well with the ESG space, which remains extremely fluid and nuanced across different industries and companies,” said Sanne de Boer, Director of Quantitative Equity Research for Voya IM.

 

Media Contact:
Kristopher Kagel
(212) 309-6568
Kristopher.Kagel@voya.com

 

About Voya Investment Management

A leading, active asset management firm, Voya Investment Management manages, as of March 31, 2021, more than $249 billion for affiliated and external institutions as well as individual investors. With over 40 years of history in asset management, Voya Investment Management has the experience and resources to provide clients with investment solutions with an emphasis on equities, fixed income, and multi-asset strategies and solutions. Voya Investment Management was named in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 as a “Best Places to Work” by Pensions and Investments magazine. For more information, visit voyainvestments.com. Follow Voya Investment Management on Twitter @VoyaInvestments