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Maia Becker
Senior Director, Responsible Investment

RBC GAM’s approach to responsible investment is firmly grounded in the belief that considering material, environmental, social and governance factors can and likely will enhance long-term risk adjusted returns. And this is really a foundational belief that then guides how we approach ESG from an investment perspective.

Melanie Adams
Managing Director & Head of Responsible Investment

The responsible investment team supports the investment teams with their processes. We help them look at their frameworks, how they're considering ESG. We help ensure that they have the data, the research, the tools that they need to integrate issue factors as part of their investment process.

My-Linh Ngo
Senior Director & Impact-Aligned Strategist, Responsible Investment
RBC Global Asset Management (UK) Limited

We think by incorporating ESG or environmental, social and governance factors into our investment activities, actually gives us a more holistic view about our investments so we're better able to make informed investment decisions.

Maia Becker
Senior Director, Responsible Investment

So what is the gender diversity on the board of directors? What are the carbon emissions of the operations of the company? How is a company approaching human rights? Do they have a policy in place? Have they had due diligence practices implemented at that company?

So ESG data is really all of those underlying inputs and data points that our investment teams use to assess the materiality of ESG at an individual level.

Melanie Adams
Managing Director & Head of Responsible Investment

So within those areas, we view proxy voting as incredibly important. We look at every shareholder ballot and we think about what are the best interests of our clients.

On the engagement side, we do many, many engagements every year. Some of these are direct with boards and senior management of the companies as well as employees, other stakeholders. Some of these are in collaboration with other like-minded investors.

My-Linh Ngo
Senior Director & Impact-Aligned Strategist, Responsible Investment
RBC Global Asset Management (UK) Limited

So, for example, in equities, investors are owners of the business. So they have quite a lot of influence. They have access to the proxy voting. When you contrast that within fixed income, we’re lenders, so we don't own the company, but that's not to say that we don't have influence. It just means that our influence plays out in different ways.

Melanie Adams
Managing Director & Head of Responsible Investment

And so as investors acting on behalf of our clients, we need to make sure we're thinking about these factors and how they might impact the long term performance of our portfolios.