Socially Responsible Investment

Our Investments

The majority of our UK investments are managed by F&C Asset Management. F&C applies a responsible engagement overlay to RSA equity funds. F&C has one of the largest Governance and Socially Responsible Investment teams in Europe, enabling it to follow a policy of active engagement across its portfolios on environmental, social and governance issues.

Last year F&C engaged with 762 companies on a wide range of issues from climate change to labour standards, with a quarterly update to RSA.

Our Investors

Our investors regularly engage with us on how we are managing our environmental and social impact. During 2007, our major institutional investors have assessed us on our performance.

“Information on how companies manage environmental and social issues is important to our evaluation of them and their prospects for success. Standard Life Investments encourage companies to report on these matters externally and assess them rigorously as part of our evaluation process.

“Following our analysis of RSA in 2007, we would challenge them during 2008 to provide more normalised environmental data to facilitate meaningful year-on-year measurement of the Company’s efforts in reducing impacts. Additional data on employee issues would be beneficial, such as training provided and staff turnover to help paint a fuller picture of this aspect of the business.”

Standard Life Investments – 2007

"During our engagement visits during 2007, RSA show a high level of commitment to the integration of CSR strategy into business strategy. The challenge going forwards is to really demonstrate the added value of this CSR strategy through consistent, measurable performance indicators, year on year which cover the breadth of your CSR programme.

"A few key challenges for 2008 are:

• Demonstrate growing financial relevance/materiality of product innovation in eco-trends and climate change - to show win/win solutions for environment and business;
• Demonstrate that cutting edge risk management can be a competitive advantage in combating climate change; and
• Encourage, where useful for performance management, centralisation of certain performance data on customer satisfaction and understand clearly those CSR criteria which determine a high level of customer satisfaction."

Karen Shaw, SRI Analyst, Schroder Investment Management Limited.