Our strategy is to lead change

First Sentier Investors places responsible investment at the heart of what we do. We are entrusted with our clients’ money, and we invest it with today and tomorrow in mind. Every investment team has the autonomy to develop their own approach to ESG issues, but the common thread is a focus on considering how investment decisions will impact clients, communities and the environment.

Our strategic approach to RI continues to focus on enhancing the quality and relevance of our investment capabilities, embedding a culture of stewardship across the organisation and engaging all of our employees in our RI work. This report outlines the progress we made in 2021 towards achieving our strategy across four focus areas: climate change, diversity, human rights and modern slavery, and nature and biodiversity.

Our approach to RI and stewardship is designed to deliver the best possible long-term outcomes for our clients.

As industry practice continues to evolve, we continue to look for standards and industry codes to benchmark ourselves against. These help us both to identify areas where we can make improvements and to guide the development of our reporting and disclosure mechanisms, in turn enabling us to increase transparency.

Two important independent standards against which we benchmark ourselves are the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) Assessment ratings and the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia (RIAA) Benchmark Report.

Our PRI Assessment results provide a useful independent benchmark of our progress against industry peers. In 2020 we scored an ‘A+’ rating in 7 of the 8 categories against which we are assessed and an ‘A’ in the 8th. For additional information, you can read our PRI Assessment Report or access the PRI Transparency Report on the UN PRI’s website.

Each year, RIAA assesses the RI practices of asset managers in its annual benchmark report. Investors are rated against four key drivers for RI: walking-the-talk, managing risk, building better beta and allocating capital towards solutions. In 2021, we were one of only 54 managers (from 198 assessed) classified as a leader. This assessment was on the basis of RIAA’s scorecard to determine leading practice.

^* Responsible Investment Association of Australasia, From Values to Riches 2020

1.Responsible Investment Association of Australasia, From Values to Riches 2020, www.responsibleinvestment.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/From-Values-to-Riches-2020-full-report.pdf