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2021 Sustainability Report

How we incorporate ESG within our firm and investment process

 

In 2021, our approach to sustainability was two-fold: within our firm and throughout our investment process. This report outlines what we were able to accomplish in these areas during 2021, and the goals we have set for 2022.

WITHIN OUR FIRM

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    • Measuring Our Climate Impact: In 2021, we completed our first corporate GHG inventory, aligning with the GHG Protocol to measure the firm’s carbon output.
    • Our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Journey: RPIA is dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DE&I”) in our workplace, and we took action to formalize this in 2021.
    • Engaging With Our Community: In 2021, as in previous years, we demonstrated our commitment to engaging with our community both within the organization through allyship and education, as well as our philanthropic giving and active volunteerism in our local community.
    • Supporting Our Employees: We established a few key initiatives in 2021 that have the sole goal of providing opportunities for growth, development, and personal support for our employees.

     

     

    THROUGHOUT OUR INVESTMENT PROCESS

    • Evolving Our ESG Integration: In 2021, we redesigned our ESG Integration framework to include sectoral materiality, better data aggregation, and structured qualitative inputs, culminating in the design of our proprietary RP Barometer.
    • The Importance of Climate Change: We continued to advance our commitment to analyzing issuers through a climate lens with new tools and our 2021 TCFD report.
    • Providing Thought Leadership: We published several thought leadership pieces related to ESG themes, sharing our views on topics our investors are focused on.
    • Increasing Focus on the Social Pillar: We continue to believe social factors will be a top thematic discussion for engagement opportunities and we designed a scoring system to help our team analyze issuers’ advancements in workplace diversity.
    • Issuer Engagement: Our Credit Research team held meaningful engagements.

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    Leveraging Our ESG Focus Through Targeted Portfolios

    As we advance our ESG integration process we are also beginning to explore opportunities to design targeted ESG portfolios in 2022, expanding on our carbon-reduced mandate. Targeted portfolios would have a specific ESG focus, built around factors that are quantifiable and impactful. These future solutions may include issuers who we believe are leaders in addressing certain ESG factors or may focus on companies exhibiting improvement in their ESG risk profiles. We continue to manage our existing Targeted Portfolio, the RP Broad Corporate Bond (BBB, Carbon Reduced) strategy. This strategy has a dual mandate of producing 100 bps per annum of excess return above that of the index while maintaining a weighted average carbon intensity lower than that of the index*.

    Learn more about RP Broad Corporate Bond (BBB, Carbon Reduced)

    * Index: FTSE Canada BBB Corporate Bond Index

     

     

    UN PRI ASSESSMENT 2021

    As a UN PRI signatory, RPIA believes that applying the six Principles better aligns our process with generating long-term stable returns for our investors. Most importantly, we believe it makes us better stewards of our investors’ capital. UN PRI provides an assessment framework for which an investor can benchmark its responsible investing practices. In 2021, RPIA received four out of five stars in both the Investment & Stewardship Policy and Direct – Fixed Income - Corporate modules, earning scores higher than the median.

    RPIA received four out of five stars in both the Investment & Stewardship Policy and Direct – Fixed Income - Corporate modules, earning scores higher than the median.


    Read our UN PRI 2021 Assessment Report

    Read our UN PRI 2021 Transparency Report

    Read more of our ESG-related content

    Putting the G Back in ESG

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    Q3 2022 - Engagement Example

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    Fixed Income and the Transition to Net-Zero

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    WiW Infographic

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    Financial Institutions - In Scope - The Role of Financed Emissions on the Path to Net-Zero

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    EU Taxonomy Paper

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    Where's Your Ambition?

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    Let's start a conversation

    To learn more about our approach to ESG and how active credit strategies can fit within your portfolio, please fill out the form below and we will be happy to get in touch with you.

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