Legg Mason ClearBridge US Aggressive Growth

The investment manager’s integrates industry-specific environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into the fundamental research process. The ESG characteristics include the binding considerations of environmental and social characteristics such as health and safety, gender diversity and climate risk as well as key governance characteristics such as corporate governance risk and data security. The assessment includes performance on the above metrics relative to the company’s industry peer set.

The Fund seeks to achieve its objective through a policy of investing primarily in a portfolio of equity securities of US companies. When selecting investments for the strategy the investment manager seeks to identify companies that the investment manager believes are experiencing, or have potential to experience, growth of earnings and/or cash flow that exceed the average earnings and/or cash flow growth rate of companies having securities included in the Standard & Poor’s Daily Price Index of 500 Common Stocks (the “S&P 500 Index”). The S&P 500 Index includes the common stocks of 500 leading US companies from a broad range of industries.  The investment manager applies its ESG process (as set out in Methodology) to 100% of the portfolio of the Fund in order to maintain a portfolio ESG rating higher than that of the Fund’s investment universe.

The investment manager uses an established proprietary research and engagement process to determine whether a company promotes best practices on ESG issues. This includes generating an ESG rating, through its ESG ratings system, by assessing both quantitatively and qualitatively. This system has four rating levels: AAA, AA, A & B assigned to companies based on performance on key ESG issues (such as health & safety, gender diversity, climate risk, corporate governance risk, data security), including performance relative to the companies’ industry peer set. Companies that receive a B rating per the proprietary ESG rating system are not considered for investment in this Fund.

The Fund will not invest in companies with significant involvement in the extraction of fossil fuels and mining that analysts feel do not demonstrate clearly better ESG attributes than other similar companies and companies involved in the production, sale or distribution of dedicated and key components of antipersonnel mines and cluster munitions. The Fund also has no exposure to companies that produce tobacco and its products but may invest in companies that indirectly generate 5% or more of their revenues from tobacco.

The investment manager uses an established proprietary research and engagement process which includes:

• Internal Scoring – Governance Score and Sustainability Score
• Engagement activity and tracking – Environmental, Social or Governance topics and stages of engagement

No index has been designated as a reference benchmark for sustainability.