An insight piece with Dr Alan Whittle, Resolve ESG fund consultant
A Resolve fund is picked using two tests, not one: the usual financial checks (asset class, performance, volatility, manager comparison) plus a sustainability assessment of the fund and its manager. There’s no fixed list of excluded sectors – each holding is judged on its own merits.
Sustainable investing is often reduced to a checklist of things a portfolio avoids. The reality of building one is more involved, and more interesting.
Ask most people what an ethical or sustainable portfolio is, and they will describe what it leaves out. Resolve starts from a different place. Rather than being a pure sustainability play or a straightforward ESG screen, it weaves together several strands at once.
“The key thing about Resolve is that it’s weaving together different aspects of sustainable, ethical, responsible investment.”
— Dr Alan Whittle
That distinction matters, because it shapes every decision that follows. Picking a fund for Resolve is a more layered process than picking one on financial merit alone. Alongside the usual questions about asset class, past performance, volatility and how a manager compares to their peers, there is a second set of tests about the sustainability characteristics of both the fund and the manager running it, and whether that fits with everything else in the portfolio.
What are the two lenses used to select a fund?
Every Resolve holding is tested twice: once for financial merit, once for sustainability impact. A fund only qualifies if it stands up on both counts.
The financial discipline of a conventional portfolio does not get set aside. It runs in parallel with the sustainability assessment. Every holding has to earn its place on both counts: is it doing something positive environmentally or socially, or at the very least avoiding harm, and does it stand up as an investment?
The asset mix looks familiar at first glance. There is fixed income – corporate and government bonds – alongside equities spread across different regions. Where Resolve departs from a conventional portfolio is in its geography. Sustainable investing tends to be more global by nature, because it can be hard to find that focus country by country. As Alan puts it, a broader net is often the more natural fit.
Why doesn’t Resolve use a blanket exclusion list?
Because a hard exclusion rule forces impossible judgement calls (how much revenue from an excluded activity is too much?), and because ethics aren’t universal – what one investor won’t tolerate, another sees differently.
The most common assumption about a portfolio like this is that it runs on a fixed list of banned sectors. Resolve deliberately does not. The reasoning is practical. Traditional ethical investing talks about sin stocks – weapons, alcohol, tobacco, adult entertainment – but the moment you try to write that into a hard rule, you run into a wall of judgement calls.
“If one of your asset managers suddenly has a holding that has a tiny little bit of revenue generated by one of these things, is that enough to kick them out? How do we manage that?”
— Dr Alan Whittle
There is a deeper problem too, which is that ethics are not universal. What one investor considers a line they will not cross, another considers essential. Rather than impose a single moral template on everyone, Resolve takes a more pragmatic path. Individual funds within it may well carry their own exclusions, and some have grown out of the older world of socially responsible investment, but the portfolio does not force one blanket screen across the whole.
How does Becketts test whether a fund manager is credible?
Through direct, face-to-face challenge – checking whether a manager’s actions elsewhere match their sustainability marketing, not just reviewing what’s on paper.
If the portfolio is not defined by what it excludes, then the scrutiny falls on who is doing the investing. A large part of Alan’s work is testing whether the managers behind each fund are as credible as their marketing suggests – and whether what they do elsewhere squares with what they claim.
“A lot of the time that involves getting face-to-face time and interviewing and really asking some quite deep and challenging questions of the investment managers that we work with.”
— Dr Alan Whittle
That is the part a checklist can never capture. A fund can look impeccable on paper and still sit awkwardly with the rest of the portfolio if the manager’s wider book tells a different story. Building Resolve is as much about judgement and challenge as it is about screening — which is exactly why it takes the work it does.
FAQs
Does a Resolve fund have to avoid certain sectors completely?
No. There’s no blanket exclusion list. Individual funds within Resolve may carry their own screens, but the portfolio as a whole doesn’t force a single rigid rule across every holding.
How is a fund chosen for the Resolve portfolio?
Every fund is assessed twice: on conventional financial merit (asset class, past performance, volatility, how the manager compares to peers) and on sustainability – whether the fund and its manager are genuinely doing what they claim.
Why is Resolve more globally diversified than a typical portfolio?
Sustainable investing is naturally more global in scope, because it’s harder to build a focused sustainability case country by country – so Resolve tends to cast a broader geographic net than a conventional portfolio.
- The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less than you invested.
- The information here is for general guidance only and does not constitute personal financial advice. If you are unsure whether an investment is suitable for you, please speak to your Becketts adviser.
- Approved by Becketts FS Ltd 02/09/2026. Becketts is a trading name of Becketts FS Ltd, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA No. 409051)
