Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
The fund has adopted five ESG principles:
1. WYPF recognises that Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors can profoundly impact an individual company’s long-term sustainability. The assessment of a company’s ESG characteristics is a fundamental component of our investment process. Factors we consider include:
- Environmental - In addition to climate change , which WYPF believes is an existentialist threat to the world, there are fund faces other challenges including bio-diversity loss, scarcity of clean water and pollution.
- Social - We believe that companies need to understand a broader array of stakeholder interests, not solely those of its shareholders and should seek to make a positive contribution to the welfare of employees, the communities in which they operate, and to the economy and society more broadly.
- Governance - We believe that companies must commit to organise themselves in line with corporate governance best practice.
2. We don’t believe that there is a trade-off between the investment performance of a financial asset and investing in a company that is behaving in a responsible and sustainable manner
3. WYPF chooses to be an informed and active manager
4. WYPF recognises its stewardship responsibilities though engagement and voting
5. Positive Engagement for Change. Our power to influence companies is derived from our economic interest: if we divest our investments we abdicate our responsibility
Our approach is further described in our responsible investment document.
Alongside this we recently commissioned LCP to provide an independent view. You can read the the detailed findings in our final report here. Through engagement with the questions asked of LCP, the report aims to offer practical guidance for us as we navigate the complexities of climate change within our broader investment strategy.
