Active ownership
Engaging for a better tomorrow
Active ownership – using our influence to push investees towards more sustainable business conduct – is central to our responsible investment approach. Our active ownership activities integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations and span across most of our products.
We believe active ownership is a powerful way to protect shareholder value, enhance long-term returns and drive positive change1. We are convinced that helping to ensure good ESG practices among our investees is important to safeguarding the long-term interests of shareholders and society. When we want a company to improve its management of ESG risks, we exercise our rights as an owner to support and influence the company.
While we are prepared to exclude companies when deemed necessary, our experience proves that active ownership is often a more effective tool to improve ESG performance, manage risk and identify opportunities for positive change.
Our active ownership efforts include direct engagement, proxy voting, attending annual general meetings and contributing to the development of industry ESG standards.
1) There can be no guarantee that an investment objective will be achieved. The value of investments can go up and down, and investors could lose some or all of their invested money.
What we choose to focus on
How we drive the work
Active ownership can generally be divided into two streams: engagement and voting. These are dependent on one another, and are equally important.
Increasingly, we are being invited by companies in the Nordics to join their nomination committees. Membership of nomination committees is a very efficient way to engage with the companies we have large holdings in – and it enables us to drive real change, for example in board gender ratios.