When you enter Robeco’s offices in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, you can’t miss the statement printed on the glass wall welcoming clients and employees alike:

Our mission is to enable our clients to achieve their financial and sustainability goals by providing superior investment returns and solutions.

Every day, our mission is supported by our core values: to always put the client first, to be innovative, to create connection in whatever we do, and to be sustainable – acting responsibly for Robeco and society.

The message is simple: client-centricity in everything we do. We always act in your best interest, while ensuring that the integrity and trust that form the backbone of a long-term relationship are always present. This means our clients talk to us and we listen, so that we can create bespoke, future-fit solutions that truly align with their unique needs. Sounds simple? Not always, but we pride ourselves on meeting every challenge.

Our true brand strength, powering all of our offerings, was developed by failing first. A year after the company was founded, half of our launch capital was gone in the aftermath of the Wall Street crisis. It was a tough start, but it compelled our first CEO Wim Rauwenhoff to declare, in 1933, that “Every investment strategy should be research-driven”. And this still drives us today. We analyze hard facts and data. Every innovative idea and every innovative product is tested rigorously, over and over, before we offer it to our clients. That’s why we call ourselves ‘The Investment Engineers’.

We create and nurture connections between all our stakeholders, including our employees, our clients, our industry, NGOs and academia. To facilitate this we share ideas and knowledge, actively engage and learn from each other, and are truly open to different opinions. Connection also requires a culture that is open and inclusive for everybody regardless of race, gender, sexual identity and background. Diverse people naturally will come up with diverse ideas and views: essential for our long-term success.

Robeco is recognized as a leader in sustainable investing. We’ve routinely integrated ESG across all our investment processes since the early 2000s, we are frontrunners in active ownership, and we continuously push the boundaries of impact investing.

But leadership in sustainable investing can only exist if it’s research-driven, integrated across our investment universe, and rooted in our behavior. We have a clear net-zero commitment and understand that sustainability is not an abstract concept but part of our daily lives. It’s present in everything from consumption and travel to attitude and a general understanding of what our clients, society and the planet demand so that the wealth we create today doesn’t compromise the needs of the world tomorrow.