Responsible funds methodology

Methodology

Eligibility criteria

Equity funds must have at least two-thirds of their holdings by market weight rated in the Corporate Knights Research universe; for balanced/corporate fixed income funds, the minimum threshold is 50% of the holdings by market weight to be rated in the Corporate Knights Research universe.‡

Rating metric

Funds (mutual funds and ETFs) receive a rating based on the weighted sustainability rating* of each of the funds’ underlying holdings (“Weighted Rating”).

Example: XYZ Fund

Holdings	Weight	Sustainability Rating
AAA Co Ltd.	50%	25%
BBB Co Ltd.	40%	10%
CCC Co Ltd.	10%	50%
Weighted rating		21.5%

Holdings date

Fund ratings are based on most recently available holdings breakdowns as provided by Fundata as of September 30, 2025.

Fund categories

Funds are classified according to the classification system established by the Canadian Investment Funds Standards Committee (CIFSC) at the “Fund Type” level of classification as provided by Fundata.

Fund scoring

Each fund receives a score that is based on the percent rank score of the fund’s Weighted Rating against other funds in the same category (“Final Score”). Scores range from 0% to 100%.

Example: Canadian equity

Fund Name	Weighted Rating	Final Score
X Equity Growth	50%	100%
Y Canadian Equity	40%	67%
Z Value Fund	10%	33%
Omega Index Fund	5%	0%

Corporate Knights 2025 podium funds: Top 10 funds in category ranking

For fund categories where there are at least 12 RI funds (defined below) and at least 50 funds that meet the minimum eligibility criteria, the top 10 scoring funds in each assessed fund category are allowed to communicate that Corporate Knights has ranked them as being among the top 10 responsible funds in the given category based on this methodology. Four fund categories meet these conditions:

Canadian equity
global equity
international equity
U.S. equity

RI funds are those funds that:

A. Have an ESG mandate or objective as identified from:

The CIFSC list of qualifying funds,
The Responsible Investment Association’s funds, and
The TMX list of sustainable ETFs

and/or:

B. Are ESG-Related Funds* which are funds where the consideration of ESG factors plays a role in their investment process and confirmed by Corporate Knights Research review of the funds’ disclosures of their investment strategies in their prospectuses and due diligence with the fund manager/s.

* Based on the CSA Staff Notice 81-334 (Revised) ESG-Related Investment Fund Disclosure

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Footnotes:

*The sustainability rating is based on Corporate Knights’ rating methodology as deployed in the 2026 Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World ranking, which can be accessed here.

Red flags: Holdings that are red-flagged automatically receive a 0% sustainability rating. Red-flag holdings include companies that are classified in the Corporate Knights database for one or more of the following criteria: access-to-nutrition laggards, access-to-medicine laggards, adult entertainment, companies blocking climate policy, 0% gender board diversity, no taxes paid, companies blocking climate resolutions, carbon bomb involvement, cement-carbon laggards, civilian firearms, controversial and conventional weapons, deforestation and palm-oil laggards, fossil fuels (energy), fossil fuel financing, farm-animal-welfare laggards, for-profit prisons, gambling, gross corruption violations, monetary sanction, government sanctions, oil-sands laggards, severe environmental damage, severe human rights violations, thermal coal and tobacco.

‡ Corporate fixed income instruments are mapped to the ultimate parent company in the Corporate Knights Research universe.