Products and services
<Trusted financial partner <Employees Products and services >Society >Ecological impact >Ethics and integrity
At Argenta, we are convinced that being straightforward, price-conscious, a trusted partner and sustainable are the best ingredients for offering our customers a strong range of products and services. Our customers’ experience and their needs are decisive for Argenta. Opting for simplicity and transparency implies that customers understand the products and can properly estimate what they need in order to improve their financial health. By being accessible and lowering thresholds, Argenta is financially inclusive.
Sustainable living
Since 2021, Argenta has been offering customers the option of taking up the interest-free renovation loans offered by the Flemish government. This initiative enables our customers to borrow up to EUR 60,000 interest-free for ecological renovations and thus improve the EPC score of their homes. For several years now, customers have been able to contact Argenta for the financing of their sustainable projects, with attractive interest rate discounts.
A great deal of effort has been put into collecting EPC information concerning our customers' homes. Mapping the sustainability character of our home loans will also become increasingly important in the future.
Argenta supports the Flemish government’s goal of making all homes energy-efficient by 2050. Argenta is investigating how it can best support its customers in this sustainable transition.
Sustainable mobility
For the purchase of a sustainable car (electric, hybrid, etc.) or a bicycle, our customers continued to enjoy attractive reductions on interest rates in 2021. Electric bicycles and speed pedelecs are automatically insured through the family insurance.
Sustainable mobility is becoming more and more important. Argenta is keen to support its customers in opting for sustainable mobility.
Sustainable investments
Argenta's sustainable investment policy is based on five basic principles:
- Simplicity and transparency of the product range and management policy are essential. The customer knows what he is investing in. Argenta assists the customer with clear advice.
- Investment decisions are made with care. Healthy investing with a balanced risk-earnings ratio is paramount.
- There is no room for unethical investments. Argenta wants to avoid negative impacts as much as possible and applies a strict exclusion policy for all direct investments.
- We want to generate a positive impact for society by investing in sustainable companies.
- We pay attention to the climate. We map the ecological footprints of the investment funds and seek to keep these as low as possible.
Argenta subjects both the investment funds under its own management and those of external fund managers in its investment offering to sustainability screening. Until discontinued in September 2021, these included funds of external fund managers (Carmignac Gestion, Degroof Petercam, Robeco), all of whom, like Argenta, had subscribed to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI).
Anyone investing via Argenta opts for sustainability. Argenta aims to make its entire fund range sustainable by 2023.
Argenta invests in best-in-class sustainable companies.
Argenta applies the best-in-class method for all its sustainable funds. In addition to the exclusion criteria that Argenta already applies, the least sustainable companies in their sectors are also excluded. With its thematic sustainable funds, Argenta focuses specifically on sustainable themes such as cleantech (alternative energy and recycling) or sustainable raw materials.
Products bearing the ‘Towards Sustainability’ label increased by no less than 172% compared to 2020.
Four funds and the Argenta Life unit-linked insurance policies (branch 23) based on them obtained the Febelfin 'Towards Sustainability' label in 2021. This is a Belgian quality label awarded by an independent body. Only investment products that meet this sustainable quality standard may bear this label. In this way the customer can be sure that he is buying a sustainable investment product and can distinguish between the different products in the market.
Through semi-annual audits the Febelfin label guarantees that the portfolio meets precisely defined investment criteria. To meet these requirements, Argenta has all companies screened every six months by the external Moody's Corporation research agency. For companies whose sustainability scores deteriorate, this can lead to mandatory divestment. In this way Argenta divested EUR 62 million of investments in 2021.
Argenta also manages widely diversified investment products under the name Argenta Portfolio, which in turn invest in the labelled products. These investments increased by no less than 44% in 2021 compared to the year before. Today, 25% of Argenta's total advisory offering is labelled.
Argenta divides its sustainable offering into two groups. First there are the funds focusing on specific thematic sustainability themes such as renewable energy, the circular economy and water purification. These aim to facilitate the financing of these companies and thus stimulate more green investments. Argenta's customers found their way to these investment products, with sales increasing by 34% over the past year.
Second, there are the sustainable investment products that invest across all sectors, in order to stimulate only the most sustainable companies per sector. Quite simply, even in the distant future the economy will still need the construction sector or the healthcare sector. This group of investment products rose by 9.5% in 2021 and it remains in this way the largest group of sustainable investments