A Letter of Introduction From The Portfolio Managers

At Brown Advisory, we are deeply committed to sustainable investing. We firmly believe that there does not have to be a trade-off between strong performance and smart investments that help address society’s trickiest sustainability challenges. 

For a number of our sustainable investment strategies, we issue formal reports each year to keep clients informed about how those strategies are generating positive impact. Enclosed is our 2021 Impact Report for the Tax-Exempt Sustainable Fixed Income strategy.

This report includes a review of how we conduct and use ESG research to drive returns, and how the investments in our portfolio are helping create positive environmental and social outcomes. We also discuss how we engage with issuers—sometimes for ESG due diligence and impact purposes, other times in an advisory capacity with issuers seeking guidance on structuring labeled bond offerings—and how we participate in the broader sustainable investing community.

We are pleased to report continued progress and advancement of our sustainable investment initiatives at the firm, in particular our work to develop new investment strategies for our clients. In fixed income, we launched our first global bond strategy, the Global Sustainable Total Return Bond strategy, and brought in a veteran global fixed income team to work with us and build it from the ground up as a sustainable solution for clients. Our firm also launched several equity strategies over the past year; our Sustainable International Leaders, Sustainable Income and Social Inclusion strategies collectively help us offer more options to clients seeking exposure to specific styles, regions and themes within a sustainable investment program.  

As we expand our investment work geographically, we are naturally expanding our ability to reflect global sustainability risks and opportunities in our portfolios. We now have more avenues than ever before to tackle issues like climate change, energy and food security, managing a global pandemic and its aftermath, and others with our investments. While this municipal portfolio is by definition focused on U.S.-based issuers, there are countless ways in which those issuers and their conduct are influencing long-term global sustainability outcomes—from the environmental and social impacts of their operations, to the way in which they are evolving their relationships with bondholders to better meet the expectations of ESG-minded investors. We hope we have succeeded in highlighting the local as well as the global impacts of municipal issuers in this report.

As always, we thank our fundamental and ESG research teams, who work tirelessly to ensure that our investment decisions are informed by trustworthy ESG data, and most importantly, we thank our clients for entrusting us with their capital. We hope you find this report informative, and we welcome a conversation with you about the work we are doing.

 

Sincerely,

 

Amy Hauter, CFA
Portfolio Manager

Stephen Shutz, CFA
Portfolio Manager
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Brown Advisory entities included are: Brown Advisory LLC, Brown Investment Advisory & Trust Company, Brown Advisory Ltd. and Brown Advisory Trust Company of Delaware, LLC.