What is stewardship?
At Standard Life, we’re aiming to help you achieve your retirement goals.
We do this by investing the money in your pension pot to give it the chance to grow over the long term.
So how does it work? Your pension pot includes investment funds, which invest in different companies. Stewardship is an important approach in helping us grow your pension, it can also help to drive wider change.
Stewardship means using our power as an investor to encourage these companies to manage environmental, social and governance factors where we believe this can help deliver value to you. Along with our investment managers, this is done in two ways – engagement and shareholder voting. Engagement means encouraging companies to better manage the risks and opportunities – including those related to ESG factors – they face, as well as setting out standards we expect them to meet in working towards a more responsible and financially successful future. An example would be talking to a company about its climate plans and how it sources certain products.
We work with our investment managers who interact with these companies through shareholder voting at their annual meetings. As shareholders in a company our investment managers can vote for or against proposals at meetings. For example, it may be necessary to vote against management boards who lack independence, or where their salaries or rewards are not clearly linked to achieving the financial success of the company.
We also use our voice to call for action from policymakers and governments, and we are involved in key industry initiatives to influence change. We believe good stewardship could positively shape both your savings and society.
Find out more about our approach to stewardship in our annual Stewardship Report.
As part of Phoenix Group, we’re on a journey to becoming net zero by 2050. Find out how we’ll continue to support a better financial future for our customers, while considering our investment in carbon-emitting sectors in our Net Zero Transition Plan.
