Investment stewardship

Responsible stewardship for positive change

Stewardship is the responsible allocation, management and oversight of capital to create long-term value for clients and beneficiaries, leading to sustainable benefits for the economy, the environment and society. We are committed to our stewardship responsibilities: active engagement with the companies in which we invest, exercising our voice as a long-term investor in industry participation and proxy voting. We harness our influence to drive positive corporate change and industry developments that benefit our clients and the communities we serve.

Focusing on key priorities

We have identified five main investment stewardship priorities that we believe are the environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues that pose the most significant long-term risks and opportunities to our investments. Together with related sub-themes, these priorities provide a structured and targeted framework for engagement with the companies in which we invest.

Stewardship roles and responsibilities

More than 1,000 investment professionals around the world work in close collaboration with our investment stewardship team, combining specialist insight and longstanding company relationships with dedicated stewardship expertise and guidance.

Find out more about stewardship governance and oversight

Research-powered engagement

Engagement is integral to our investment processes across asset classes. Research into companies, macroeconomic drivers, sectoral factors and ESG themes drives our engagement and enables us to intervene proactively before risks are realised and opportunities missed. Our engagement approach is founded on four building blocks.

Intentionality

We are determined to act in the best interests of our clients by encouraging investee companies to be focused on responsible allocation of capital and long-term value creation.

Materiality

We strive to understand how factors impacting sustainability are financially significant to companies over time, acknowledging differences in the regions, cultures and organisations in which we invest.

Additionality

We focus on strategic issues that are most urgently in need of our involvement to alter the status quo.

Transparency

We are clear about the stewardship work we do and take steps to be transparent to our stakeholders as we expect our investee companies to be to their own.

Through the three pillars of our Enhanced Engagement Program, we aim to drive meaningful change at investee companies that most require our time and attention.

Focus list: Companies in our equity and/or corporate credit portfolios to which we have meaningful investment exposure and where our research has identified financially material ESG issues.

Thematic projects: Engagement initiatives on specific themes – aligned with our five stewardship priorities – targeting a broader number of investee companies on the same set of issues.

Reactive engagements: Controversies, norms breaches and issues arising from the proxy voting process that require reactive engagement.

Engagement in 2021

Proxy voting

We vote shares held in our clients’ portfolios based on our reasonable judgement of what will best serve the long-term interests of our clients, in accordance with the legal standards applicable to the particular client account.

We have comprehensive proxy voting policies and guidelines in each region, consistent with law and expectations of good governance practices in these different locations.