Transparency is an essential part of responsible investment. By being transparent about our responsible investing approach and activities, we can demonstrate our commitment to, and progress towards, achieving real change. It also helps us communicate openly about the challenges of developing a responsible investment service tailored to the diverse needs of our clients. 

We report regularly on our responsible investment activities to our clients and other stakeholders.

Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) Report

The United Nations-backed PRI runs the largest global reporting project on responsible investment. Each year we benchmark our performance against industry peers on responsible investment through involvement in the PRI annual reporting cycle.

Our most recent PRI scores can be found below:

Investment & Stewardship Policy (4/5 Stars) – 72%

Direct – Listed Equity

• Active Fundamental – Incorporation (2/5 Stars) – 37%
• Investments Trusts – Incorporation (2/5 Stars) -27%
• Active Fundamental – Voting (4/5 Stars) – 80%
• Investment Trusts – Voting (4/5 Stars) – 80%

Direct – Fixed Income

• SSA (2/5 Stars) – 28%
• Corporate (2/5 Stars) – 29%

As a wealth manager, Rathbones manages thousands of investment portfolios for private clients, and therefore any score will reflect the many different investment approaches we take on their behalf. Our recent scores capture a snapshot of the wider business in 2020, and we have made huge strides in overall ESG integration during the intervening years, although we recognise there is always more to do and to refine. We expect to be able to demonstrate significant progress in next year's scores. 

Rathbones' fixed income team have been pioneers in ethical investment for many years. Unfortunately, due to administrative difficulties at the PRI, some mistakes were made in the scoring of the fixed income submission, and as a result the numbers shown are inaccurate. Whilst these problems have been acknowledged by the PRI, as results for the period have now been published, they are unable to make the appropriate upward revision to the score.

You can find our PRI transparency report here.

Responsible investment reports

Since 2015 we have been producing annual responsible investment reports, detailing our voting and engagement records and case studies, and more recently including how we are integrating ESG issues into our research and investment processes. 

Voting disclosures

If you are interested in finding out how we voted on an individual company, you can visit our proxy voting site for Rathbone Investment Management, which is updated daily.

TCFD disclosure

The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) was created in 2015 by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to develop consistent climate-related financial risk disclosures for use by companies, banks, and investors. We support the TCFD recommendations and our first disclosure can be found in our annual report. We are continuing to make progress on this. 

Responsible investment insights

Our responsible capitalism report provides the anchor for our thought leadership in this area, which is based on the firm belief that every long-term investor should care about responsible investing – even if they are not necessarily motivated by the benefits to society. 

More recently our Planet Papers have built on this idea, highlighting some of the ways we can help our clients to make a positive difference in the world through their investments, while also providing more sustainable financial returns.  You can read these papers and other reports, articles and case studies on our responsible investment hub. 

Visit our reports and disclosures page to find both current and archived reports.