WINNIPEG, MANITOBA--(Marketwired - March 20, 2015) - IGM Financial Inc. (IGM) (TSX:IGM) has been added to the Jantzi Social Index (JSI), a leading Canadian sustainability index. IGM is one of Canada's premier personal financial services companies, with business carried out principally through Investors Group, Mackenzie Investments and Investment Planning Counsel.
"IGM's addition to the JSI is significant for institutional and individual investors who are committed to sustainability," said Andrea Carlson, IGM's Assistant Vice-President, Corporate Responsibility. "By the key measures used in the JSI - environmental, social and governance - IGM is demonstrating its leadership in sustainability."
Carlson said that the addition to the JSI comes as IGM recently enhanced its reporting and introduced a number of initiatives demonstrating the company's longstanding commitment to sustainability:
- Investors Group and Mackenzie Financial Corporation are signatories to the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), offering the largest suite of mutual funds in Canada committed to PRI;
- IGM published its first Corporate Responsibility Report in 2014, guided by Global Reporting Initiative G4 Sustainability guidelines; and
- IGM has been named to CDP's Canadian Climate Disclosure Leadership Index for the quality of its reporting on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
Global environmental, social and governance research firm Sustainalytics, which annually updates the JSI, recognized IGM as one of the top five performing Canadian diversified financial services companies.
About the Jantzi Social Index
Launched in 2000, the JSI is a market capitalization-weighted common stock index consisting of 60 Canadian companies that pass a set of broadly based ESG rating criteria. In creating the JSI, Jantzi Research, now Sustainalytics, set out to create an index which could be used by institutional investors in benchmarking the performance of socially screened portfolios and by financial institutions in developing investment products such as index mutual funds, exchange traded funds, index portfolios, index futures and options.
The JSI's underlying universe is the TSX Composite Index. According to Sustainalytics, the cumulative performance of the JSI has surpassed that of the S&P/TSX Composite Index and the S&P/TSX 60 since its inception in 2000.
IGM Financial Inc. is one of Canada's premier personal financial services companies, and one of the country's largest managers and distributors of mutual funds and other managed asset products, with over $149 billion in total assets under management. Its activities are carried out principally through Investors Group through a network of over 5,100 Consultants, Mackenzie Financial Corporation through a diversified network of third-party financial advisors and Investment Planning Counsel through a network of financial planners who are dedicated to serving the needs of their clients. IGM Financial Inc. is a member of the Power Financial Corporation group of companies.