Hymans Robertson is committed to providing independent advice to help our clients achieve better outcomes. This document sets out our approach to the consideration of Responsible Investment (RI) issues in the development and delivery of our advice.
This policy will be reviewed annually.
We recognise that language is one of the critical barriers to the effective consideration of RI by investors and believe it helpful to maintain a consistent definition of RI in our dialogue, both internally and with our clients, to ensure that there is a focus on financial outcomes. In this regard, we consider RI to have two dimensions:
One feature of a successful investment strategy is the set of investment beliefs around which decisions are made. Beliefs matter as much to those formulating and delivering advice as they do to those to whom advice is being delivered. We have therefore developed and agreed our own RI beliefs which are set out below:
Although we believe responsible investment should be considered as part of an integrated approach to investment decision making, we also believe it works best when embedded within the culture of a firm. We therefore maintain separate RI ratings for investment managers distinct from our ratings for products.
Our approach explicitly considers how RI matters are addressed and integrated within investment managers decision making. We do not make a judgement on the composition of portfolios unless the terms of the mandate dictate otherwise. Rather, we seek to understand how managers evaluate and understand the risks and opportunities that are posed by individual investments within the context of managers’ own policies, and how these are captured in portfolios. We assess managers across four key criteria as follows:
Our preference is for processes to be evidence based and we place greater weight on managers who are clearly able to demonstrate the application of their approach across all criteria.
Development of our approach to RI and client support is led by Simon Jones, Head of Responsible Investment. Three other groups support this:
We believe that, where possible, advice to clients should be delivered by client consultants and it is therefore necessary to ensure that our consultants have sufficient knowledge to deliver advice. We therefore provide RI training to the Investment Practice as follows:
Hymans Robertson is a Service Provider signatory to the Principles of Responsible Investment and a supporter of the 2017 AMNT/UKSIF initiative.
We report annually to the PRI having done so since 2017 when reporting for Service Providers was piloted. We also report as requested to the AMNT in support of our commitment.
Reviewed: January 2021
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