Exclusion Screening

Screening is one of the most common strategic approaches used in SRI investing. There are various ways to screen, depending on investors’ concerns and values.

Exclusion screening lets us exclude - or filter out - companies that are in specific industry sectors or involved with certain practices or products.

At Desjardins Funds, we believe it’s important to invest in all areas of economic activity. By doing so, we can gain a voice in companies that need to be urged to improve their environmental and social practices. This also encourages investment diversity, which is always important.

However, certain sectors are off-limits for our portfolios right from the start because they can endanger people and the environment. So Desjardins Funds uses exclusion screening to filter out companies in the following industries from SRI consideration:

• Nuclear
• Arms
• Tobacco

When selecting stocks for our SRI portfolios we also make use of inclusion screening that evaluates companies on the basis of environmental, social, and governance criteria.