Responsible investing is an important aspect of the service we offer our clients and a key point of differentiation with passive investment strategies and many other active managers. SVM began managing Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) products in 2006. Since then, our engagement principles have evolved to include environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues across our range.

Our top priorities are to do our best for our clients, by maximising their portfolio returns and protecting their interests, and to drive benefit for society. To select investments we employ a consistent and disciplined approach that focuses on intensive bottom up research. As part of our investment process we assess many factors including ESG considerations for their potential to materially affect a company’s performance.

As a boutique investment firm we recognise that, because in most cases we will not hold significant positions in investee companies, it can be difficult to encourage changes in management attitudes and behaviour purely by exercising client voting powers alone. Instead, we have adopted a more flexible approach and we engage with company management and boards as and when we believe it will be of most benefit.

Using information derived from a combination of in-house research, dialogue with the company and external sources we identify the key issues and discuss them directly with company management, in order to affect change.