Saturna Capital and HANetf have announced the launch of an actively managed global equity ETF focusing on Islamic-compliant stocks with positive ESG characteristics.
The Saturna Al-Kawthar Global Focused Equity UCITS ETF (Ticker: AMAL) will launch via the HANetf platform and is listed on London Stock Exchange, Borsa Italiana and XETRA.
The Saturna Al-Kawthar Global Focused Equity UCITS ETF (Ticker: AMAL) aims to achieve long-term capital appreciation. The ETF complies with the principles of Islamic investing and will integrate ESG scoring into its evaluation of the investments it makes. Managing the AMAL ETF will be the highly experienced team from Saturna Capital Corporation; a USD6 billion asset management firm based in Bellingham, Washington, US that has managed Islamic and socially responsible investment strategies for over three decades. Saturna Capital is one of the largest managers of Islamic-compliant assets in the United States.
Jane Carten, President of Saturna Capital says: “For several years investors from outside the US have asked how they could access our investment strategies and we are excited to have this opportunity to offer an Islamic UCITs ETF to those investors.”
AMAL will follow a similar investment philosophy and approach as the US-registered Amana Growth (AMAGX), Amana Income (AMANX) and Amana Developing World (AMDWX) Funds, which also incorporate Islamic and ESG guidelines. These funds were launched in 1989, 1994 and 2009 respectively.
Saturna Capital and HANetf have already partnered earlier in 2021 to launch the Saturna Sustainable ESG Equity HANzero UCITS ETF (SESG), an actively managed, sustainable ETF with a HANzero carbon offset that demonstrates active investing to reflect sustainable and ESG values. SESG is a carbon neutral investment as the carbon impact of the equity holdings is offset with carbon offsets through a product feature called HANzero.
Scott Klimo, CFA, Chief Investment Officer of Saturna Capital says: “Saturna Capital believes including environmental, social and governance factors in an Islamic portfolio further reduces risk, leading to more resilient portfolios and that companies proactively managing business risks related to ESG issues are more resilient and make better contributions to portfolios designed for patient investors. We are therefore delighted to launch the Saturna Al-Kawthar Global Focused Equity UCITS ETF (Ticker: AMAL) to investors looking for an actively managed ethical fund that invests globally and is benchmark agnostic in terms of geographic and industry allocations.”
