HSBC Asset Management (HSBC AM) has launched the HSBC GIF Global Equity Sustainable Healthcare Fund, the firm’s first healthcare fund focused on sustainability and impact.
The fund will be co-managed by Dr. Nathalie Flury and Dr. Michael Schröter, Co-Heads of Sustainable Healthcare Equity, who both joined HSBC AM earlier this year.
The fund, which is aligned with UN SDG Goal 3, Good Health & Wellbeing, aims to drive social impact without sacrificing on performance. The fund will be fully ESG integrated and invest in a range of 35-40 companies with a bias towards mid-caps, long-term engagement, low turnover and active management interactions. These companies will have a clinical and cost savings focus, aiming to improve healthcare affordability. There will be no fixed allocations across geographies, sub-subsectors, company stages, and/or profitability.
This strategy will be made available to HSBC’s wealth clients across its private bank and wealth and personal banking segments, in addition to targeting both wholesale and institutional investors with a particular focus on high-net-worth individuals, family offices and private banks.
Flury and Schröter, say: “The current healthcare model is not sustainable and patient outcomes are being negatively impacted alongside the industry and investors. This fund aims to address this inequality and invest in companies that are offering different approaches through new treatment options, technology and innovative business models.”
As healthcare spending consistently outpaces GDP growth across markets, rising costs are straining healthcare systems globally which results in access restrictions. In 2018, global spending on healthcare reached USD 8.3 trillion, or 10 per cent of global GDP1. In the US, which accounts for nearly half (42 per cent) of global healthcare expenditure total spend is projected to increase by over 50 per cent in the next eight years alone.
Investing in companies that focus on healthcare innovation can reduce the overall cost for all stakeholders in the system (below). Companies that create new treatments, devices, diagnostics, digital-health and services can all play their part in achieving this.
