Affirmative Investment Management (AIM) claims to have promoted good practice in the bond market through its engagement with issuers, as many have enhanced their reporting to meet AIM's stringent criteria.

Noting the persistent problems in the green, social and sustainability bond universe revolving around a lack of standardisation and disclosure of methodology, Affirmative Investment Management (AIM) engages with 95% of issuers held over the reporting period on their methodology and impact data to try to eliminate double-counting in its impact reporting.

AIM produces impact reports on all of its portfolios each year, with disclosure on use of proceeds allocation across sectors and geographies, greenhouse gas footprint (scope 1-3) and savings, alignment to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, as of 2020, physical risk assessments across four different global warming scenarios. These reports cover 90% of the holdings of each of AIM's portfolios.

Other highlights of AIM's reporting methodology includes:

• Tracking more than 1,000 projects and initiatives per annum across approximately 100 countries.
• Portfolio-weighted key performance indicators, such as volume of water treated or clean transport passenger capacity supported.
• Portfolio mapped to the SDGs with project case studies as support.

In addition, the firm developed the publicly available Rockefeller Foundation-funded Carbon Yield Methodology, in partnership with ISS-ESG and Lion's Head Global, which enables green bond issuers to clearly convey the climate change mitigation impact of their bonds. Meanwhile, investors can use the methodology on each green bond they hold to aggregate the climate change mitigation impact of their investments.