As a firm, Wellington Management is committed to minimizing the environmental impact of our global operations and to being an environmentally responsible neighbour in the communities where we operate. To this end, the firm has a broad, global initiative to improve environmental performance and promote, as part of our culture, a shared sense of responsibility for that performance by all personnel.

As part of this effort, Wellington Management is implementing environmentally-conscious practices in these areas:

• Energy Consumption
• Green Building Standards
• Recycling and Composting
• Carbon Footprint
• Procurement

The firm has created a group called “Getting Greener” which supports increasing the firm’s awareness of environmentally sustainable practices and identifying, evaluating, and implementing conservation programs that complement our business and support our communities. 

Wellington Management’s sustainable investment team is comprised of 18 members across sustainability research and strategy, ESG sector research, and climate research. The team brings a diverse set of backgrounds from fundamental research, investment and data science, IT, portfolio management, and strategic asset allocation.

Wellington Management’s ESG Research team resides within the broad investment research resources of the firm and brings depth of ESG expertise to the investment dialogue. Our team of 8 ESG Research Analysts has an average of 16 years of professional experience.

An additional 17 colleagues spend the majority of their time on ESG and sustainable investment. This includes members of the investment teams with dedicated sustainable investment strategies, Investment Products and Fund Strategies teams representing those strategies, client services, and global marketing.

In addition to the Sustainable Investment team, our 53 Global Industry Analysts and 40 credit analysts engage companies and research proxy issues within their coverage from a stewardship perspective. In our community of boutiques model, our 52 investment boutiques dedicate time and effort to stewardship activities with the companies and issuers they own on behalf of clients. We also have a 16 member Investment Stewardship Committee comprised of colleagues across multiple functions.

 Wellington manages a variety of equity and fixed income strategies that have explicit sustainability objectives. This includes impact investing strategies, in addition to strategies focused on deep ESG integration and engagement. Many of our impact approaches align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and also produce Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reporting. Please see below for brief descriptions of our sustainable investing approaches, including those that are funded, in incubation, or under development.

Wellington Sustainable Investment Platform

Climate Strategy: a global equity portfolio designed to help address carbon and sustainability under-investment in a targeted approach that delivers both environmental and financial returns on capital. This strategy is focused on climate change mitigation and adaptation through five broad sustainability categories: low carbon electricity, energy efficiency, water and resource management, low carbon transport, and resilient infrastructure.

Emerging Market Development: an emerging markets equity strategy that invests in companies taking advantage of social pressure and policy initiatives supporting conscious consumption of energy. This strategy is focused on four structural changes happening as a result of economic development: enhanced productivity, inclusiveness, improving living standards, and sustainability.

Global Impact: a global equity portfolio that invests in innovative companies whose core business addresses the world’s major social and environmental challenges with a measurable impact. This is determined by Wellington’s proprietary bottom-up global fundamental research. This strategy is focused on 11 impact themes, which can be summarized into three categories: life essentials, human empowerment, and environment.

Global Impact Bond: a fixed income portfolio that invests in organizations addressing some of the world’s major social and environmental challenges. The approach invests primarily in investment grade securities issued by government, supranational, local agency, corporate, and securitized issuers, while seeking to address a range of impact themes including affordable housing, education, health, and alternative energy.

Global Stewards & European Stewards: concentrated, high active share, global large cap equity approaches that seek to identify best-in-class companies that are deemed attractive on a 10-year fundamental perspective, able to sustain above-industry returns on capital, and demonstrate superior stewardship qualities. We are deliberate with our portfolio construction, emphasizing stock selection to be the primary source of alpha while minimizing the costs of active management through low turnover and thoughtful trading.

Low Carbon Emerging Markets Systematic Equity: an emerging markets equity portfolio managed by Wellington’s Quantitative Investment Group whose objective is to maximize net-of-cost alpha relative to risk while conforming to a specific set of carbon-intensity constraints.

Advancement of Women*: a global equity portfolio designed to invest in high-quality companies that value the inclusion and promotion of women. As part of the fundamental research process, the investment team focuses on female representation at the board and senior management levels as a proxy for companies’ commitment to diversity. This strategy uses engagement to assess whether a company’s commitment to diversity is genuine and to encourage goal-setting, transparency in reporting, and improvement toward gender parity.

Broader Perspectives*: a global large cap equity approach that takes an alpha-first mindset to ESG integration given that an ESG perspective can yield differentiated conclusions on management behavior and business practices. The portfolio reflects a combination of ESG leaders, as well as businesses we believe are showing improvements over time.

* Denotes a strategy that is currently in incubation

Clients often give us discretion to vote proxies on securities held in their accounts. We take the responsibility of proxy voting seriously. We have policies and procedures designed to ensure that we collect and analyze all relevant information for each meeting, apply our proxy voting guidelines accurately, and execute the votes in a timely manner. These policies and guidelines are written to support the best economic interests of the client, in accordance with regulatory and fiduciary requirements. Our policies and procedures are contained in the firm’s Global Proxy Policy and Procedures and Global Proxy Voting Guidelines, both publicly available on our web site.

We vote proxies in the best interests of our clients as shareholders and in a manner that we believe maximizes the economic value of their holdings. Importantly, we do not automatically vote proxies either with management or in accordance with the recommendations of third-party proxy providers. We vote according to our own Global Proxy Voting Guidelines and we employ a third-party vendor to perform administrative tasks related to proxy voting. While our proxy voting guidelines set forth general guidelines for voting proxies, we evaluate each proposal on its merits. The ESG Research team examines each proxy proposal and recommends voting against proposals that we believe would have a negative effect on shareholder rights or the current or future market value of the company’s securities. While the ESG Research team provides proxy voting recommendations, the portfolio manager for the client account has the authority to decide the final vote, absent a material conflict of interest. Each portfolio manager examines and votes each proposal with the goal of maximizing the long-term value of securities held in their clients’ portfolios. In 2019, we voted against management on one or more proposals at 39% of the annual general meetings in which we voted on behalf of our clients.

In addition, there is no “house vote.” Our proxy voting system allows different votes to be submitted for the same security. Our firm is organized as a collection of portfolio teams — each with its own unique investment philosophy, approach, and time horizon. Consistent with this structure, various portfolio managers holding the same securities may arrive at different voting conclusions for their clients’ proxies.

Our operating systems for proxy voting do not support the ability to apply client-specific policies. Rather, where proxy voting authority has been delegated to Wellington Management, we will vote proxies based on our Global Proxy Policy and Procedures and Global Proxy Voting Guidelines.

As inputs into our internal analysis, Wellington Management subscribes to the research services of Glass Lewis & Co. and ISS. We also subscribe to the Viewpoint voting platform provided by Glass Lewis & Co. to facilitate electronic receipt and execution of ballots.

Summary reporting of our firmwide proxy voting activity is included in our Global ESG Research Update, which is published quarterly and made publicly available through our Insights web site. Our actual votes on behalf of a given client or pool are a matter of record for that client or pool, and are disclosed to the respective party in the reports they are entitled to receive.

We recognize the need to improve public transparency of our voting practices at the firm level. We have been doing so in Japan since the 2017-2018 voting season, and we intend to expand this globally, disclosing a record of significant proxy votes cast for the trailing 12-month period from 30 June 2020.

In certain instances, Wellington Management may be unable to vote or may determine not to vote a proxy on behalf of one or more clients. For example, we may be unable to vote proxies when the underlying securities have been lent out pursuant to a client’s securities lending program. In general, Wellington Management does not know when securities have been lent out and are therefore unavailable to be voted. Efforts to recall loaned securities are not always effective, but, in some circumstances, Wellington Management may recommend that a client attempt to have its custodian recall the security to permit voting of related proxies. Another instance when we may refrain from voting is when the cost of voting outweighs the value of the vote. For example, we typically do not vote in share blocking markets, where countries impose trading restrictions or requirements regarding re-registration of securities held in omnibus accounts in order for shareholders to vote a proxy. The consequences of such requirements – including the potential impact on liquidity – are evaluated on a case by case basis when determining whether to vote such proxies.

Wellington recently won the 2020 Investment Innovation of the Year award from Insurance Asset Risk. Climate risk is a key topic for global insurance companies, and this award highlights our commitment to climate science and our research partnership with WHRC.