Doherty has been providing high quality investment management and client service to not-for-profit institutions for over thirty years and our investment philosophy reflects their objectives with priorities placed on capital preservation and stable growth in assets with low overall volatility. We have significant experience with foundation and endowment clients across Canada in numerous areas including health care, governments, education and religion.
Given our experience with institutional clients, we frequently assist in the development and monitoring of Investment Policy Statements. Doherty has also helped clients develop a framework for Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) ranging from tailored proxy voting, portfolio screening and industry/stock specific exclusions.
- Investment Philosophy
- Responsible Investing
Doherty’s investment approach is based on the three key tenets of our investment philosophy.
1. Preservation of Capital
Our clients are entrusting us with assets they have worked their entire lives to accumulate, and we take this responsibility very seriously. Doherty’s investment process is focused not only on what can go right for stocks, but what can go wrong. Doherty is very cognizant of risk management and our investment philosophy is focused on preservation of capital and reducing risk in the investment portfolio without sacrificing long-term returns.
2. Fundamental Equity Research
Doherty’s investment team analyzes investments in the context of owning a piece of the underlying business. All investment decisions are presented to our Investment Committee for full review and analysis of the fundamentals of the underlying business. Our goal is to invest in companies for the long-term, while at the same time maintaining an ongoing disciplined risk management process should fundamentals change.
3. Value – Acquire Great Companies at Great Prices
A key component to Doherty’s investment process is assessing the fair value of a business and investing clients’ capital only when companies are at a reasonable valuation. Our disciplined commitment to focusing on company fundamentals and valuation has allowed us to outperform the market in negative years and provide strong returns with an emphasis on lower volatility.
Read more on Doherty’s investment philosophy.
Doherty & Associates has a long history of working with Endowments and Foundations, where our approach to selecting ‘best in class’ companies, fits in well with their concern to invest responsibly. We have the view that companies which adhere to best industry practices on issues related to environment, social and governance (ESG) norms, ultimately benefit from these practices.
Over time we have developed our Socially Responsible portfolio framework using the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investing (UNPRI) as a guide. The Global Reporting Initiative has also been incredibly useful in quantifying risks associated with Responsible Investing and it continues to expand to better enable us in our efforts. The UNPRI covers Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues with an emphasis on encouraging disclosure, defining targets and continued progress towards those targets. The GRI is a common global framework that companies can adopt to measure ESG factors (eg. greenhouse gases).
Along with owning best in class companies, we believe the approach of positive engagement through shareholder involvement can be impactful. Our proxy voting service provides our foundation clients with the option to vote in line with Socially Responsible issues. Of course we are able to exclude any individual stocks or sectors which are not consistent with our client’s values as portfolios are individually tailored (i.e. not pooled funds).