Asset manager Neuberger Berman has launched its Sustainable Asia High Yield fund.

The Dublin-domiciled UCITS fund and will invest in high yielding, quality-biased Asian credit opportunities displaying strong sustainability profiles.

It will be benchmarked against the JPMorgan JESG JACI High Yield Index.

The fund will be managed by Nish Popat, Sean Jutahkiti and Prashant Singh. Popat, who is based in London, and Singapore-based Jutahkiti and Singh already oversee the group’s Asian Debt – Hard Currency fund.

The managers will analyse ESG factors as they seek to identify businesses that use technology to produce and provide solutions for a low carbon future for the fund to invest in.

The managers’ overall aim is for the portfolio to have a carbon intensity 30 percent lower than that of the broader Asian high yield market.

The fund will exclude corporate issuers in the bottom tenth of Neuberger Berman’s ESG rankings, as well as sovereign issuers with weak ESG profiles.

Mr Popat said: “Asia forms a large and resilient part of the global economy and is now one of the largest bond markets in the world. Yet, sustainable investing all too often stops at the border to the emerging world.

“We believe EMD investors have an important role in promoting sustainability, as emerging countries contain about 80 percent of the world’s population, contribute towards 60 percent of its GDP and generate two-thirds of its carbon emissions.”