Introduction from Sophie Lawrence
Greenbank’s Stewardship and Engagement Lead
Taking an active approach to engagement is a core part of our service and complements our investment analysis, as we aim to create and preserve long-term value for our clients.
Our engagement action plan for 2024 was ambitious, spanning three priority projects on climate, nature and health. We also had a range of secondary projects underway, focused on issues such as access to medicine, human rights due diligence in supply chains, plastics and animal welfare.
The report also introduces our engagement priorities for 2025, which lie under three broad themes of climate, nature and human rights and we outline our secondary focus areas which include circular economy, workforce and access to medicine.
We think carefully about how we select engagement projects, considering factors such as client interest, relevance to the companies Greenbank invest in, alignment to our sustainable development themes, and the potential to create wider impact than could be delivered by our direct engagement alone – for example through partnerships and raising investor awareness of overlooked issues.
To create long-term value for our clients and promote sustainable development, one of the core ways we use our engagement activity is to signal to the market that ethical, sustainable and impact (ESI) issues are important to investors, centred around long-term value creation and risk management. This is particularly important in the current context, where sustainable investing is becoming increasingly politicised.
An important aspect of our engagement work is the opportunity to effect change on a broad set of sustainable finance issues through educational events and collaboration with external partners.
Some of our highlights from 2024 include:
We are always open to feedback on our engagement strategy from clients and stakeholders, so please get in touch if you would like to find out more or discuss anything mentioned in the report.