Clients are on different journeys. Our job is to be transparent.

Beth: 
Hi, everyone. 
Thanks for joining us today. I'm joined by Ashley and Ed and we're going to talk through our new Responsible Investment and Stewardship report today, which is just launched. 
  
I think it's fair to say that this report is very much a flagship report for us at Royal London Asset Management. We've been responding to the Stewardship code for many years now and actually our first statement came out in 2014. 
 
To kick us off, I'd like to ask Ashley, why is it that we take so much time, care, we put in so much energy into this report? 
 
What is it that we're valuing in this report? 
 
Ashley: 
Yeah. I mean, I, I authored that 2014 report. And so it, the report itself has changed massively over the years. It looks much better than it did in 2014. It's got a lot of detail, a lot of examples. 
 
It's a really important document. As you said, it's provides a window into what we do not only in the response investment team, but across all the investment teams. 
 
So within the report, you can have a look at how each investment team, each strategy thinks about how it integrates environmental, social and governance factors, how they undertake stewardship and lots of case studies and how we voted a number of engagement examples. And I think why the report is really important to us is it's a really good opportunity to be really transparent with our clients. And it really showcases how we're really active stewards of our assets, really trying to improve not only how we invest, but also improve the companies that we're invested in over time as well. 
 
Beth: 
And Ed, I think it's fair to say that over the last few years, particularly in the last 6 to 9 months, we've seen the kind of rise of this anti ESG rhetoric, the rise of the politicisation of ESG. 
 
Have you seen that kind of factored in our response to our report or factored into how we're thinking about response investment here? 
 
Ed: 
And look, many of our clients are going on very different journeys on this pathway. And yes, you're right, there's been a lot of talk in the press. 
Our commitment to our clients is that as active managers, we are going to be active stewards of their investments and their money that they're trusting with us. I think what's really powerful about the report, as Ashley says, is that transparency that we're seeking to provide. 
 
So clients may be on different journeys and have different views, but if we are as transparent as we can be, they can use that information to make the decisions that are right for them. So that's why we commit so much time to documenting, reporting and explaining all the hard work that that we do. 
 
But that comes first and foremost from being really committed, active managers. 
 
Beth:  
And do you think being a mutual plays any part of that? 
 
Ed: 
Like as a mutual, so owned by our members, owned by people who invest in our products, we are blessed with the ability to take a, a long term view of how we invest money, but also we feel that stewardship responsibility incredibly deeply. If your owners are also your investors, there's that total alignment and how you think about things. 
 
So, yes, that that long term view and that commitment to people and planet really drives a lot of what we do and how we actively manage money. 
 
Beth: 
And diving into the report a bit then obviously huge amounts of work go in every year into what we do here at Royal London Asset Management. 
 
Interested to hear particular highlights for you that were in the report. 
 
Ashley: 
Yeah, sure. So we engaged with over 400 companies last year. We voted over 3500 meetings.  
 
We've covered a wide range of topics in the report. So as you would expect, artificial intelligence features in there. We've got both some information about engagement, but also some of the investment team views on that. 
 
Corporate governance has always been a big theme of ours going way back to 2014. So that features quite well.  Cybersecurity also a little bit on anti-microbial resistance. 
 
 
I would say if I was to pick out some of my 2 proudest parts, parts of the report, the first would be the voting section. Voting people sometimes take for granted that you vote at annual meetings. We do 3500 or more every year. But what is really important about that is it really showcases our active management approach. So we do not auto vote. We have a human in my team look at every single vote and we will make a very active decision working with the investment teams on how we're going to vote on all those meetings. 
 
Working also very close with climate experts, pay experts and the fund managers to make those decisions. So I'm really proud of all the work that goes into the voting. 
 
I think the second piece would be the work we've been doing around just transition. So this is really about making sure that as we transition the economy to low carbon world, we're not creating consequences for employees, communities and suppliers. So trying to make sure we're considering the social aspect of climate change.  
 
So this year we've published some guidance for banking sector and we're now evolving some of the work on that to really look at what we've called just adaptation. So again, what are the social consequences of how we would adapt to climate change and again, playing into our mutual values, the real focus on some resilience and social inclusion, I think it works quite well for us. 
 
So those would be two pieces I'm quite proud of this year and Ed coming at it from maybe a more client centric perspective. 
 
Do you have a different take? 
 
Ed: 
Ashley makes a good point there. And what I would emphasise is that however proud we are in the work that we do, it needs to be done with others. We need to create a movement here if we're going to create change. 
 
And so I'm most proud of the work that we've done with clients and that's captured in the report, as well as influencing policy with the organisations that we're members of. 
 
So it's really important to us to be active both with the investee companies, but we're also with our own clients and with those other agencies. 
 
Beth: 
So if I can be as bold to say, sounds like 2024 was another great year for us from a responsible investment perspective. And the responsible Investment and stewardship report predominantly focuses on this, but it does also point to direction of travel where we're looking ahead. 
 
So it'd be interested to hear from you both, what are you excited about? What are our big deliverables, key focus areas going forward? 
 
Ashley: 
 
So I think as Ed said, partnership with clients is really important. 
 
So we've been for a number of years doing engagement, company engagement projects in partnership with some of our major clients. And that's when we work with the clients on the research. 
 
We help prepare for meetings and sometimes clients will come to company meetings with us and we get really, really positive feedback from our clients on that. They really enjoy doing that and find it really valuable. So we want to be doing more of that. I think that provides a real value add. 
 
There's a real focus increasingly on human rights and the social side. It's something that I'm really personally quite passionate about and something we will be dialling up for the next year. Biodiversity, I think we talked about that last year in the report. That's a very complex topic, but again, something we're working with our group parents on.  Our strategy on biodiversity, providing some tools for investment teams to think about how they can integrate biodiversity into their investment analysis and understanding risks. 
 
And then I guess there's lots of changes happening globally. You know, there's lots of regulation. We talked about the anti ESG sentiment. So we're really, really live to that. 
 
And we also have a really big growth ambition. I'm sure Ed will speak to this, but really look into new markets, global markets, new asset classes. So we've got within private assets, for example, and other areas where stewardship is equally important that we really want to be driving change. Yeah.  
 
Ed: 
But we're rightly proud of 2024 and the report captures a lot of good work, but we're not declaring victory, right. This is this is a journey we're on and we're on with our clients and others in the world.  
 
So I'm most looking forward to continuing to work with clients together to effect positive change. I am especially excited about what we will be able to bring to market in terms of new products and investment capabilities in the year and years ahead. 
 
Royal London Asset Management has been actively managing strategies for our parent and for third parties for many years now. We have a number of strategies that we've been working on with our parent that we are getting ready to bring to the external market as well. These are now powerful contributors to our Net Zero ambitions and to how we're again actively working with our with our clients. 
 
All of them centred on this premise that we really believe that you can do well and you can do good. 
 
Beth:  
So the report is now live. Please go to our website to read the report or do reach out if you have any questions. 
 
Thank you. 
 
All date sourced 2024 Stewardship and Responsible Investment Report 
 
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