Ashmore Group's "highly credible impact reporting framework" for its Emerging Markets Debt Impact Fund helped it to secure the Best sustainability reporting by an asset manager, medium and small for the fixed income category.

As one of the first mainstream asset managers to adopt the Impact Performance Reporting Norms by the Impact Management Project, it has committed to reporting:

• the outcomes of its impact investments,
• who experiences them,
• how much impact is delivered,
• the investment's contribution relative to what would otherwise occur, and
• the risk of impact not materialising.

The importance of this reporting, which also spans potential negative impacts, is partly linked to the asset manager's focus on investing for impact in emerging markets. Ashmore said the Emerging Markets Debt Impact Fund, which launched last year, is the first emerging markets public debt fund to report on the outputs and outcomes associated with every holding and the overall fund.

"Ashmore demonstrates effective reporting on their impact and traces the allocations all the way back to the UN SDGs, demonstrating where they believe they are having impact," said one judge. "They go the extra step to also discuss their engagement with investment opportunities."