Navigating through transitions

Energy, food and materials

Sustainable entrepreneurs

Our enterprising spirit helps us guide clients through the sustainable economy. Our approach to sustainability focuses on three essential transitions – in energy, food and materials – that are fundamental to the era we’re living in. We help our clients navigate through these transitions with our extensive in-house knowledge and expertise.

We have proactive discussions with our clients and the companies in which we invest on their behalf. And together, we set sustainable goals and work tirelessly to reach them – for us, and for future generations. This requires active engagement, creative thinking and decisiveness – all while developing strong, personal, long-term relationships with our clients. As sustainable entrepreneurs, we use our specialist knowledge to co-create new products and innovative solutions.

Our focus areas

Based on the United Nations’ Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs), we’re focusing on three areas in which we can make the most impact and play a crucial role in shaping a more sustainable future:

Energy transition

SDGs 7, 14 and 15

Limiting climate change and biodiversity loss

Food transition

SDG 3

Improving health and well being so people can live better for longer

Materials transition

SDGs 8 and 12

Moving to circular production and consumption for a smarter economy

We're here to guide our clients through these transitions and mitigate the harmful effects of economic activities on the planet. While each transition is equally important, our primary focus right now is the energy transition and the vital shift towards a low-carbon economy, while our secondary focus is the food transition and promoting biodiversity. You'll find extensive information in our white paper.

Download white paper "Navigating through transitions"

Our investment approach

As a wealth manager, the biggest social and environmental impact we make relates to how we invest our clients’ money. Which is why we have an extensive responsible investment policy in place. Developed and implemented internally, this policy is based on a long-term, focused investment philosophy coupled with an active ownership approach. We believe that an actively managed investment portfolio creates the most value in the long term – whether in financial, environmental, social or governance terms.

We engage with fund managers and investee companies on a broad range of topics, including social and environmental issues, and we exercise our voting rights at annual general meetings. If fund managers or investees are not willing to comply with our minimum standards, we may choose to divest.

In addition, we offer three main types of investment solutions: responsible, sustainable and impact. All our products and solutions are responsible as a baseline: they meet UN and OECD guidelines on human and labour rights, and they meet governance and stewardship standards. We call this “doing no harm”. Through our sustainable and impact investment solutions, we proactively focus on “doing good” – aiming to create positive impact.

Our ambitions and targets

We've set several ambitious targets to help combat climate change across our business: for our own operations, our balance sheet and our assets under management. We are committed to become a net-zero wealth manager in 2050 and reduce our footprint with 50% in 2030. Also we have set ourselves annual targets:

Our own organisation

Reduce direct carbon emissions via our own organisation by 7% per FTE per year.

Balance sheet

Reduce indirect carbon emissions via our mortgage portfolio per euro invested compared with previous year.

Assets under management

Reduce the carbon footprint of our discretionary assets under management with 7% per year.

Engagement

Engage with companies representing > 50% of carbon footprint of the fund