Robeco scored 81 points out of a maximum possible 90 in the survey entitled ‘Lifting the Lid: Responsible Investment Performance of European Asset Managers’, earning second position just behind Schroder Investment Management.
ShareAction is a London-based group which “works to encourage institutional investors to be active owners and responsible providers of financial capital to investee companies.” It sent detailed questionnaires grilling 40 firms controlling EUR 21 trillion of assets between them, and published the results on 13 March.
“The study sought to investigate whether these major asset management firms are behaving as responsible investors, addressing environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in order to better manage risk,” ShareAction said in its summary of the findings.
“All of the firms bar one are signatories to the Principles for Responsible Investment, but we aimed to find out if these managers are truly committed to stewardship. Ultimately, the intention was to lift the lid on asset managers’ true performance on responsible investment.”
ShareAction researched a wide range of topics when evaluating a true commitment to sustainability investing, based on the responses to the survey. These included to what extent asset managers measured the impacts of their investments, and whether internal oversight and governance practices reflected their stated commitment.
Robeco achieved the maximum scores in many categories, including being publically transparent about detailed SI policies, disclosing voting records, applying SI policies to the investment process, and actively promoting sustainability investing across the asset management industry.
“We are proud that Robeco is ranked second in ShareAction’s ranking of the Responsible Investment performance of European Asset Managers,” says Carola van Lamoen, Head of Active Ownership at Robeco.
“This ranking confirms the high quality of our Sustainability Investing and Active Ownership practices. As a pioneer of sustainability investing, it has long been one of the core pillars of what we do at Robeco since the 1990s. So it’s nice to get this kind of recognition.”
