Border to Coast Pensions selects Robeco to perform its voting and engagement services

Robeco’s Active Ownership service enables institutional investors to meet their fiduciary responsibility and become active owners of listed companies through voting and engagement. Robeco votes at shareholder meetings and engages with the senior management of listed companies on behalf of its clients to encourage organisations to adopt long-term, sustainable business practices.

As part of achieving its objective to make a difference to long-term investment outcomes for its Partner Funds, Border to Coast was looking for an experienced partner with similar values to work with to ensure active ownership across all its investments, both internally and externally managed. Border to Coast has also recently become a member of the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum as well as a signatory to Climate Action 100+, and supporter of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures and 30% Club Investor Group. Border to Coast is looking to work with these partners to strengthen its ability to influence change in its priority engagement areas.

Rachel Elwell, CEO, Border to Coast said: “We are strong advocates of Responsible Investment and holding companies to account on environmental, social and governance issues. This is central to Border to Coast’s corporate and investment ethos and a key part of delivering our Partner Funds’ objectives.

We were impressed by Robeco’s breadth of engagement across all asset classes and geographies, especially in emerging markets and Asia, and by their level of detailed research and analysis. It was also important to us that this analysis could be incorporated into our own investment processes and philosophy. We are looking forward to working with Robeco in the years to come as we look to understand and measure how active ownership makes a difference to investment outcomes.”

Peter Walsh, Head of Robeco UK added: “We are incredibly pleased to be working with Border to Coast on their active ownership programme. Winning this mandate builds on our solid traction in the local government pension fund sector and will add further momentum to our Active Ownership team and strengthen our local sustainability investing profile.”

Robeco votes at about 5,000 shareholder meetings each year, focusing on high-profile cases such as remuneration, mergers & acquisitions, significant holdings, companies under engagement and environmental, social and governance issues. Robeco uses a proprietary assessment framework and will also analyze voting research, gather input from investment managers and review sustainability reports, annual reports and news items.