Responsible investment | Insight Investment | Insight Investment

Our responsible investment policy explains that we believe reflecting material and relevant ESG issues within investment processes, and in our dialogue with issuers and other stakeholders, can help to support better investment decisions and has the potential to help our clients achieve their desired outcomes.

This belief leads us to pursuing the following activities:

1. Putting responsibility at the heart of how we do business
2. Integrating ESG issues into our investment processes
3. Acting as stewards of companies and other entities
4. Supporting efforts that seek to improve the operation, resilience and stability of financial markets
5. Collaborating with others on ESG issues
6. Exercising transparency and disclosing our activities

Our progress in implementing the aspirations set out above will differ across our investment strategies and teams for various reasons, including the mixed availability of relevant data and differing integration opportunity sets.

Click here to read our responsible investment policy.

Insight does not invest in companies involved with the production, sale or maintenance of cluster munitions or landmines.

There are two major international conventions that address cluster munitions and landmines specifically:

• The Convention on Cluster Munitions (2008): This Convention restricts the manufacture, use, and stockpiling of cluster munitions and the components of these weapons
• The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (1997): This Convention, often referred to as the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention, aims to eliminate antipersonnel landmines around the world

In line with these international conventions and following their ratification into domestic law by a number of countries, Insight has adopted a global policy which commits it to avoiding direct investments in companies that:

• Design, produce, sell or maintain cluster munitions and/or landmines
• Undertake research and development to develop cluster munitions and/or landmines
• Breach the requirements of the Convention on Cluster Munitions or the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention

This policy:

• Applies across all asset classes
• Excludes affiliated companies: that is, companies with affiliations or commercial relationships with screened companies will not be excluded from investments
• Does not apply to passive holdings in index-tracking instruments

With respect to share ownership, in the majority of investment strategies Insight does not have material investments in physical holdings. Where Insight does hold physical equity positions we routinely vote on behalf of our clients with regard to the companies in which they have a shareholding.

Insight retains the services of a third party for proxy voting services and votes at all meetings where it is deemed appropriate and responsible to do so. The third party provider offers research expertise and voting tools through sophisticated proprietary IT systems allowing Insight to take and demonstrate responsibility for voting decisions. Independent governance analysis is drawn from thousands of market, national, and international legal and best practice provisions from jurisdictions around the world.

Independent and impartial research provides advance notice of voting events and rules based analysis to ensure contentious issues are identified. The third party provider analyses any resolution against Insight-specific voting policy templates which will determine the direction of the vote. Where contentious issues are identified these are escalated to Insight for further review and direction. Insight will undertake a review of the voting policy templates on an annual basis.

To read Insight Investment’s proxy voting policy, please click here.

Insight's equity voting records are available here.

Insight became a signatory to the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative in April 2021, committing to reach net-zero emissions on the assets it manages by 2050 at the latest. We published our initial objectives and targets in line with the initiative’s commitment statement. Read about our pledge here.

Scientific research shows that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for global warming and its related climate events. Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting global warming to close to 1.5ºC or even 2.0ºC will be beyond reach. The damage that temperature rises of this quantum would cause, both to the environment, society and financial markets, is well documented.

It is our view that we have a role as stewards of our clients’ capital to prevent such a scenario and ensuring a phase-out of thermal coal is central to that.

Read about Insight’s position on thermal coal here.

Insight has implemented a sustainability risks policy which sets out Insight’s policies on the integration of sustainability risks in its investment decision-making process, as required by the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. Read a summary description of the key features of the policy here.

Our stewardship policy outlines the philosophy and approach we apply in our stewardship commitments, to reflect the scope and parameters of our activity. The Policy describes:

• the scope of our stewardship activity,
• our approach to stewardship, and
• how we engage with issuers and on systemic issues.

Our purpose is to support our clients in meeting their investment objectives. We aim to do so by overseeing our clients’ capital in a responsible manner, and to create value for our clients as specified in our agreements with them.

The mandates we operate vary across asset type and geography, but are underpinned by our belief that well-managed entities are likely to be better investments; in our view they are more likely to have less potential downside risk and to help achieve investors’ desired outcomes with greater certainty. To effectively manage investments on behalf of our clients, we seek to take account of factors that we believe can drive investment returns, work with issuers in which we may invest to help ensure these factors are appropriately and prudently managed, and collaborate with stakeholders in and beyond the investment industry to create the conditions for long-term investors and their clients to thrive.

Click here to read our stewardship policy.