Responsible Quant
Systematically encourage strong environmental, social and governance practices.
Integration
ESG integration has been a research initiative at Intech for several years. We've discovered that it's possible to increase portfolio ESG scores substantially higher than benchmark scores while targeting consistent long-term outperformance. We do this by incorporating both third-party ESG ratings and internal statistical analysis of ESG themes into our portfolio optimization process. This helps enhance portfolio- and pillar-level ESG scores while complementing other portfolio risk constraints. Our ESG integration research continues, as we pursue ESG integration for 100% of our portfolios.
Stock Screening
Intech has extensive experience employing negative screening for Environment, Social and Governance issues while seeking consistent outperformance. We do not use an off-the-shelf approach; instead, we work with our clients to exclude stocks based on their specific needs. Clients benefit from our portfolio-centric investment process that enables them to exclude stocks while maintaining strategy performance objectives. Intech has been collaborating with clients in this manner since 1997.
Active Ownership:
Voting and Engagement
We attempt to influence corporate behavior through proxy voting and ongoing engagement. For clients who delegate proxy-voting authority to us, Intech uses ISS Sustainability Proxy Voting Guidelines unless otherwise directed. These guidelines seek to align with internationally recognized initiatives (e.g., PRI). Intech also employs ISS ESG Pooled Engagement Solutions, which allows us to join with other investors to engage companies who fail to meet responsible business conduct standards, face credible allegations, or lack transparency in their ESG risk mitigation efforts.
Advocacy Groups
Intech participates in several governance- and sustainability-related organizations, recognizing that a collective effort to bring about positive change has more impact than those of individual asset managers or owners. We are a long-standing and active member of Principles for Responsible Investing (PRI), a supporter of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), and a signatory to Climate Action 100+. More recently, Intech became a supporter to the Investor Agenda 2021 Global Investor Statement to Governments on the Climate Crisis. We also support the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to below 2°C (3.6 degrees F), and manage some portfolios that include a carbon-reduction objective alongside a traditional risk-return objective. As a subsidiary of Janus Henderson Group, we participate indirectly in the Carbon Disclosure Project.
Corporate Governance
and Responsibility
Our commitment to sustainability extends to Intech’s business. Intech’s Corporate Social Responsibility Committee leads this undertaking, seeking to understand Intech’s impact on our community and the world, provide direction to company leadership, incorporate best practices to minimize our impact, and evaluate progress. Our efforts promote professional and personal environmental awareness, advance diversity and equal opportunity in the workplace, further professional development, and encourage healthy lifestyles. We align our human resources activities to support these goals.
Our Founder
Our founder, E. Robert Fernholz, Ph.D., was born in 1941 in New Jersey. His father was a distinguished German chemist who fled Germany and immigrated to the US in 1935 to join the faculty of Princeton University. Dr. Fernholz's mother, Mary Briganti Fernholz, was the daughter of Italian Immigrants who came to the US in the early 1900s. She held an M.S. degree in Economics from Smith College and worked at Princeton University as a research assistant in the Economics Department.
Growing up in Princeton and attending Princeton Country Day School, Dr. Fernholz graduated high school at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts in 1958. He majored in mathematics at Princeton University, under the direction of William Feller, and received his B.A .degree magna cum laude in 1962. He earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at Columbia University in 1967, writing his thesis under the direction of Lipman Bers.
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Dr. Fernholz began his career as an academic mathematician at the University of Washington, and later held various professorships at City University of New York, Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, and Princeton University. Fernholz left Princeton University in 1980 to become Research Director at Arbitrage Management Company. He also worked at Brignoli Models where he worked along-side Dr. Harry Markowitz.
In 1987, Dr. Fernholz founded Intech, basing our mathematical investment process on a 1982 paper he published, “Stochastic Portfolio Theory and Stochastic Market Equilibrium.” He later elaborated on these mathematical methods in his monograph, Stochastic Portfolio Theory (Springer 2002). Dr. Fernholz is also the author of numerous research articles both in pure and applied mathematics as well as statistics and mathematics of finance.
Dr. Fernholz married Luisa Turrin in 1970 and they have two sons: Daniel and Ricardo. Luisa Turrin Fernholz earned a Ph.D. in Statistics from Rutgers University and is Professor Emerita in Statistics at Temple University. Daniel T. Fernholz holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and Ricardo T. Fernholz earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently Assistant Professor of Economics at Claremont McKenna College.
Dr. Fernholz and his wife Luisa founded the Minerva Research Foundation in 1993 to promote research in mathematical and statistical sciences and to encourage the participation of women in these disciplines. Luisa Fernholz directs the Foundation, which has given support to the Institute’s School of Mathematics since 2007. Dr. Fernholz is also a trustee at the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent, postdoctoral research center for theoretical research, and the academic home for distinguished scholars like Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel, John von Neumann and Hermann Weyl.
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