Insights
What do stewardship and sustainability mean for Stonehage Fleming?
To celebrate World Environment Day this month, we interviewed our Sustainability & Stewardship Officer, Philipp Cyrus
What do stewardship and sustainability mean for Stonehage Fleming?
The two concepts are strongly intertwined but also distinct from one another. Stewardship means supervising or taking care of something. For us as an investment manager, it refers to the responsible allocation, management and oversight of capital to create long-term value for clients and beneficiaries.
Thinking about our clients’ best interests is at the heart of our stewardship activities, whether it be voting, engagement, manager selection/allocation or internal governance.
Sustainability meanwhile, refers to the responsible long-term management of environmental resources, in a socially inclusive way. For us, that is about reducing our environmental footprint, being an inclusive employer and practicing robust portfolio ESG risk management.
But while distinctly different, we do still believe that the two concepts are closely connected. The responsible creation of long-term value for clients can be strongly correlated with sustainably allocating, managing and overseeing capital.
As an investment business, we see an awareness and consideration of financially material sustainability risks and opportunities as a baseline part of our stewardship practices. Where a client’s stated interest demands further incorporation of sustainability considerations this will be reflected in stewardship practices accordingly.
Why is sustainability and stewardship important?
Collectively, we use too much of Earth’s resources. We over-pollute the planet, don’t currently manage our economic system sustainably and often don’t adequately understand the risks that come with this.
The financial services industry has a key role to play in addressing these. Through capital allocation, it can help steer the transition to a sustainable economic system and through robust stewardship practices it can help embed an adequate consideration of sustainability risks and opportunities in capital allocation, management and oversight.
Before joining Stonehage Fleming, I worked in various research roles, so my outlook was more theoretical. After years of ‘just’ talking and thinking about sustainability, I wanted to make a real, positive impact. My role here allows me to do that – whether it be working toward reducing our operational environmental footprint, enhancing our integration of sustainability or stewardship practices on the investment side, or developing our company-wide sustainability strategy.
How has Stonehage Fleming contributed to sustainability and stewardship recently?
Over the past year, we have conducted a range of engagements with managers and companies, focussing on financially material sustainability topics and general governance concerns. These include a climate engagement with all the companies in our Global Best Ideas Equity Fund. For more information, please see our 2025 Stewardship and 2024 Climate Report.
From a sustainability perspective, we have picked up the pace on a range of green initiatives across the Group. These include gathering operational emissions, water and waste data, introducing energy efficiency measures across a number of our offices, using fewer chemicals for cleaning our facilities, planting plants for improved room climate across offices, as well as moving into new and more energy-efficient offices in locations such as Jersey or Guernsey.
In the UK office, we have reconfirmed our two-days-a-year staff volunteering policy and started a move to living wage suppliers. Globally, we have continued our active support for over 50 charitable organisations (please see our Group Philanthropic Giving Report for further details).
We continue to learn as we go, and try to improve our practices step-by-step. Meeting our sustainability and stewardship ambitions will not happen overnight. It will be a multi-year journey for us, that we recognise the need for. And we will keep pushing forwards proactively.
Opinions expressed are as of the time of writing and are subject to change without notice.
Issued by Stonehage Fleming Investment Management Limited (SFIM). Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 194382).