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Engagement
As a large institutional investor, Insight is committed to encouraging the companies in which we invest to achieve high standards of corporate responsibility. Insight believes that investors have both a responsibility and a compelling commercial interest to provide support and encouragement to companies in their efforts to meet international standards in managing social, ethical, and environmental issues, or agreed best practice where formal codified standards don't exist.
We therefore engage extensively with companies in which we invest to encourage them to run their businesses according to the highest environmental, social and ethical standards. In our experience, mismanagement of environmental, social and ethical risks can result in a range of business impacts. These may include stricter regulation, law suits, loss of consumer trust and sales, damage to reputation, higher operational costs or even, in some circumstances, the loss of a licence to operate. Conversely, companies can benefit from exploiting environmental and social trends, by, for example, launching new products or services that address green or ethical segments of the market. We believe we have a duty to our clients and customers to identify these risks and to then enter into dialogue with companies to ensure that they understand these risks and manage them effectively.
We have been engaging with companies on a wide range of social, environmental and ethical issues since 2002. Most of our engagement is proactive and focuses on exploring specific issues in-depth with a large number of companies to which the issue is particularly relevant. On occasion, usually when a major incident or news story comes to light, we engage with the affected companies reactively. Three principal factors guide our selection of engagement topics:
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The materiality or business relevance of a particular theme or issue to companies or sectors in which we invest.
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The likelihood that our intervention will significantly affect a company’s conduct or contribute constructively to an evolving debate.
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The seriousness of the environmental or social impacts at hand.
We engage with companies by attending or participating in: inter alia, one-to-one meetings, hosting seminars, via correspondence, and collaboratively with other investors. We publish a record of all of our engagement on this website. Click here to view our quarterly engagement reports.
Engagement themes
The major themes on which we have engaged or continue to engage are:
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