Corporate Social Responsibility
  (GMT)
 
 
Responsible Investing

"Engagement with companies on ESG matters is a fundamental part of our business."

 

ESG White Paper

 

Policy and Process

 
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Equities

Engagement policy for Aberdeen’s equities business

Aberdeen began managing Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) equity products in the early 1990s. Since then, our SRI screening service has expanded to include engagement with companies on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues. In December 2007, Aberdeen became a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing (UNPRI) which highlighted our commitment to engage our investee companies on ESG issues and communicate with clients on our engagement activity. Today, Aberdeen's team of dedicated fund management professionals oversee portfolios which provide a range of screening options for investors.

Equity Engagement Policy

We engage all the companies in which we invest on ESG matters.

Engagement with companies on ESG and other, more traditional SRI topics is a fundamental part of our business. Aberdeen has engaged companies on SRI issues for a number of years in conjunction with managing traditional SRI funds. Today, we also engage companies on wider ESG matters since we see these extra-financial topics as critical to understanding the whole picture of the companies in which we invest.

Preliminary research

Corporate governance issues have long been examined at the first stage of our investment process and are included in our quality rating. Increasingly, environmental and social factors are also examined by our regional teams before investment is made in a company.

Engagement

Engagement is essentially a tool by which we can discuss the manner in which a company runs itself and operates in the greater community. We use engagement to monitor a Group’s social behaviour, its impact on financial matters, and, when necessary, encourage companies to be better corporate citizens. As such, we regard engagement as:

  • Critical to understand investee companies as a whole
  • Invaluable when conducting proper ESG and SRI research
  • Pivotal to maintaining open dialogue and solid relationships with companies
  • Something we currently undertake
 
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