Source
Comments
Not clear that engagement occurs post-investment.
"b. Managing Environmental and Social Risks We have set environmental and social risk (ESR) standards for product development, investments, financing and supply chain management decisions. As part of our due diligence process, we engage with clients and vendors to better understand their processes and policies and to explore how any environmental and social risks may be mitigated. We apply a precautionary approach by avoiding transactions, products, services, activities or vendors if they are associated with material, environmental or social risks that cannot be properly assessed or mitigated. Our ESR standards include the description of controversial activities and other areas of concern we will not engage in, or we will only engage in under stringent criteria.Our standard risk, compliance and operations processes involve procedures and tools for identifying, assessing, reporting and monitoring environmental and social risks. These include client onboarding, transaction due diligence, product development and investment decision processes, regular supply chain management and portfolio reviews. The latter give us an accurate aggregated exposure profile and an enhanced insight into our transaction and client onboarding processes. Based on the outcome of these reviews, we can explore ways to improve the future portfolio profile along a range of risk parameters.Our processes are geared toward identifying clients, transactions or vendors potentially in breach of our standards, or otherwise subject to significant environmental and human rights controversies. We use advanced data analytics to assess companies associated with such risks, integrated into our web-based compliance tool, before we enter into a client or vendor relationship or transaction. This significantly enhances our ability to identify potential risks. In 2020, our ESR unit assessed 2,168 referrals, of which 81 were rejected or not pursued further, while 342 were approved with qualifications and 56 were pending at year-end 2020." pg. 4