Responsible investment at Royal London Asset Management

Royal London Asset Management is committed to being a responsible investor. This means being a good steward of our clients’ assets and promoting responsible investment and good governance across all asset classes. Alongside this, we also believe that considering environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in the investment process can help us deliver better returns for our customers and clients.

At Royal London Asset Management, we have embraced responsible investing for many years and continue to expand our offering in line with the evolving world of ESG best practice. In 2020, we expanded our ESG integration practices and integrate these across all our asset classes.

As our ESG practice has evolved, we’ve invested in our responsible investment team, and our research and insight in this area – providing the foundation for future growth in this evolving area.

Principles for Responsible Investment

The Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) score outlines how signatories’ implementation of responsible investment compares year-on-year, across asset classes, and with peers at the local and global level, by providing a confidential report. Royal London Asset Management has been a signatory of the PRI since 2008 and, like many others, has chosen to publish our latest report and results.

Unlike previous years, scoring is now based on star ratings. For each module, responders are given a star rating out of five, which is derived from a score out of 100.

These latest scores are reflective of the 2021 reporting period. The delay in reporting results was industry wide and not within our control.

Royal London Asset Management’s latest scores are as follows:

We have managed to match or beat the median score of all reporting signatories on each of the modules reported on.

We have seen substantial developments in responsible investment since the 2020 reporting period, including significant growth in the size of the Responsible Investment team and the application of new internal systems. In addition we have moved our passive equity funds to ESG and low carbon tilted strategies, significantly improving our responsible investment credentials in the passive and quantitative equities space. We are committed to responsible investment and continually seek to evolve our product offering to help clients meet their own responsible investment objectives.

"We have been a signatory of the PRI for over 10 years, and we recognise the importance the survey plays both within the market and internally at Royal London Asset Management. We welcome our scores and are excited to see how our continued investment in responsible investment will be assessed in next year’s survey response" - Ashley Hamilton Claxton, Head of Responsible Investment.