We have reported portfolio impact annually since 2020, across both debt and venture. Every figure is traceable to an issuer's use of proceeds reporting or a portfolio company's own impact report.
We are a certified B Corporation and a UN PRI signatory, and our work contributes to all 17 Global Sustainable Development Goals.
The reports cover carbon abatement, water, clean transport, education and gender equity. Figures are pro-rata estimates rather than audited numbers, and the methodology has changed between years, including the sources used for gender metrics. Each report states its own basis and as-at date.
Risk management should do more than protect capital from loss. It should build portfolios that navigate uncertainty and benefit from the change it creates: what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls antifragility, growing stronger through shocks rather than merely withstanding them. Sustainability analysis serves both sides, revealing where these shifts weaken existing value and where they create new value.
Credit is the resilient foundation. Fixed income depends on durable cash flows and an issuer's capacity to service its obligations when conditions deteriorate. ESG factors affect that capacity through regulation, litigation, resource constraints, stranded assets, reputational damage and shifting demand.
These are not risks adjacent to the credit case; they are part of it. We assess exposure, adaptation and whether disclosures withstand scrutiny. Weak reporting is itself a signal: risks that cannot be measured are rarely well managed.
Venture provides the convexity: exposure to companies that gain disproportionately as markets change. The forces pressing on established businesses also create room for new entrants: decarbonisation, resource scarcity, demographic change and rising expectations around health, access and resilience.
That analysis points not only to what may lose value, but where new value emerges. We target companies where strategic impact strengthens the commercial case and drives return. In 2024, 87% of our venture investments were SDG-linked.
Risk, sustainability and impact are not separate conversations. They are perspectives on how value endures, or is created, through change. The same research serves both books: the pressure that stresses an issuer in credit often opens a market for a company in venture.
Credit protects capital by lending to issuers whose cash flows withstand these shifts. Venture seeks asymmetric upside by backing the companies they favour. Together they reflect Taleb's barbell: resilience at one end, convexity at the other, one body of research informing both.
A portfolio built this way is not merely protected from these shifts. It is positioned to benefit from them.
As at 31 December 2024, across Artesian's venture capital and fixed income investments. Sourced from the Impact Report 2024/25. These figures are provided on a best endeavours basis and are pro-rata estimates based on issuers' use of proceeds reporting and startup impact reports.
23.1KtCO₂e
Carbon abated by green and sustainable investments
102M
Litres of water saved
155K
Trips on clean and sustainable transport
14.5Km²
Green energy efficient buildings financed
16.9K
People given access to water and sanitation
2.2K
People given access to education and materials
191
Female founded startups funded since inception
All 17
Sustainable Development Goals we contribute to
Reported outcomes only mean something if the work behind them is visible. These are specific things we did in the reporting year, not intentions.
We had held Shinhan Bank since its 2020 inaugural AUD issue. Its impact reporting disappointed with no prospect of improvement, so further issuance offered no real impact. We declined its latest social bond and exited legacy positions.
We met NBN three times during 2024 to press the case for a social bond. A bond carrying social metrics is now on its 2025 issuance calendar. NBN is the largest Australian non-financial corporate issuer of labelled bonds.
Granular impact data at the bond level remains elusive, even from the major data providers. So we built our own, prorating reported outcomes to an investor's share of the portfolio. In 2025 it opened as a web portal available to any investor.
We reached net zero across Scopes 1 and 2 in 2021/22 and have sustained it, and have committed to halving operational emissions by 2027. Our footprint sits 23% below the 2021/22 baseline. Air travel remains our largest source.
A 2024 study of 100 Australian regeneration projects found forest cover barely increased despite millions of credits issued. The failure modes: grazing land rather than cleared cropland, and low rainfall. Hiltaba, which we support, passes both.
A $60m fund with Hort Innovation, Australia's grower-owned research and development corporation, targeting 20 to 30 startups from pre-seed to Series A. It is the first under Hort Innovation Frontiers, which will deploy up to $500m.
Clean energy companies in our venture portfolio abated 9,504 tonnes of CO2e during 2024, against 4,906 the year before. Across the venture book, 87% of investments were in SDG-linked startups, scaleups and solutions.
Companies with at least one female founder were 29% of our 2024 venture investments. The Female Leaders Fund, launched in 2023 with Hostplus and Legalsuper, exists because the underrepresentation of women in venture is a mispricing.
Awarded to the fixed income team at the 2024 KangaNews Awards. The Green and Sustainable Bond Fund was also upgraded to Recommended by Zenith and won Best New Ethical Fund at the 2024 Mindful Money Awards.
As a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment since 2019, we undertake to:
Annual reporting on sustainability, gender equity, emissions and the deployment of capital for social purpose.Select a year for its key details, or open its cover for the full report.
This edition frames risk management around antifragility rather than loss avoidance. It documents the world-first horticulture venture fund built with Hort Innovation, the impact calculator opening as a portal to any investor, and the year Artesian was named Australian Sustainability Fund Manager of the Year. It also sets out where engagement changed an outcome, including an issuer exited over inadequate impact reporting.
Marks twenty years of alternative and impact investing. The most technical of the five, it introduces Scope 4 avoided-emissions analysis on portfolio companies, quantifying the emissions their products displace rather than only those they produce. It also adds a commitment to halve total firm emissions by 2027.
The edition that introduced the impact calculator, built because bond-level impact data was not available from the major providers. It also carries Artesian's first full gender pay gap disclosure across both domestic and offshore teams, published against industry and global benchmarks.
The year operational net zero was reached across Scopes 1 and 2, two years ahead of the firm's own target date. It also covers the launch of the Female Leaders Fund, cornerstoned by Hostplus and Legalsuper.
The first report, and the baseline everything since is measured against. It sets out the responsible investment framework, the commitment to net zero by 2030, and the beginnings of impact measurement across both the debt and venture books.
They are pro-rata estimates. For fixed income we take an issuer's own use of proceeds reporting and attribute the share corresponding to our holding. For venture capital we use portfolio companies' own impact reporting, attributed to our ownership stake. Figures are provided on a best endeavours basis, and no independent audit of the underlying data has been commissioned.
Because the underlying reporting is not consistent enough between years to chart honestly. Several aggregate metrics were carried forward unchanged between reporting years, and the methodology has changed more than once, including the data sources used for gender metrics and the calculators used for our own emissions. A year-on-year chart would imply precision the data does not support, so we publish the current snapshot with its as-at date.
It takes an allocation and a period, then returns the environmental and social outcomes attributable to that share of the Green and Sustainable Bond Fund over that period. It exists because granular impact data at the bond level is still not available from the major data providers, so we built and maintain the underlying dataset ourselves. It sits on that fund's own page.
Sometimes it changes the issuer, and sometimes it changes what we hold. In 2024 we met NBN three times to press for a social bond, which is now on its issuance calendar. In the same year we exited all legacy positions in an issuer whose impact reporting we judged inadequate, and declined its next social bond. Both outcomes are documented in our engagement reporting.
We apply a zero-tolerance exclusion for issuers involved in fossil fuels, tobacco, gaming, alcohol, pornography and munitions. Beyond exclusions, the process carries a positive bias toward green, sustainable and social bonds.
We reached net zero across Scopes 1 and 2 in 2021/22 and have maintained it since, and have committed to halving operational emissions by 2027 against a 2021/22 baseline. Air travel remains our largest single source. Offsets cover the remainder, and we select projects deliberately: independent research has found many Australian regeneration projects deliver little additional sequestration, so we screen for the failure modes that research identified.
