Sustainability is integral to our long-term growth. We place great emphasis upon strong internal management structures, governance systems and communications, and we uphold diversity as a positive influence within our culture.

The integration of responsible investment (environmental, social and governance) criteria is a key element of our investment process, and we have actively voted our clients’ shares since 1978.

We are committed to a variety of environmentally guided initiatives, including the Carbon Disclosure Project and the UN Principles for Responsible Investment.

On climate change, our work has, for many years, included engaging with companies to understand the risks posed to the successful delivery of their business strategies, and to push for better disclosure on their management of carbon risks and opportunities.

We welcome and support the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations, not only as a means of gaining better transparency on climate-related risks to investments, but also as part of a wider movement to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

We have recently published our TCFD Disclosure Report, which was commissioned by Hanneke Smits, our chief executive officer. It constitutes our first step in TCFD disclosure, and we are particularly pleased to have identified that our total ‘Scope 1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’ emissions, which take into account the emissions from all our clients’ investments, are 26% below those of a multi-asset benchmark, and that 51% of our clients’ utility investments are in renewable energy.*

We plan to undertake further work to enhance our disclosure, including more extensive climate-related scenario analysis to assist in identifying climate-related investment risks and opportunities. We will also continue to participate actively in industry-wide initiatives to advance investor thinking about climate change.