Responsible Investment
Reliance on strong governance, strategy and culture.
Our business is built to deliver sustainable risk-adjusted alpha to our clients over the long term.
Responsible Investment
What we mean by ‘Responsible Investment’
Our business is built to deliver sustainable risk-adjusted alpha to our clients over the long term. We are guided by a Responsible Investment philosophy, which we believe distinguishes us from our competitors and aligns us to the needs of long-term investors. Our approach is two-fold: In addition to acting as a ‘responsible investor’ (i.e. a good steward of the assets we invest in), we are also focused on being a ‘responsible manager’, taking seriously our fiduciary responsibilities to our clients.
Being a responsible manager means:
- Transparency: Wilmer Gibson presents clients with detailed information and support on their investment strategy – including analysis and supervision of performance, attribution and risk. Our advisors are committed to being fully transparent on all of our investment portfolios, actively keeping clients informed of developments.
- Delivering sustainable risk-adjusted alpha: One of our core beliefs is in the value of an active investment management approach. We seek to offer products that can generate sustainable long-term alpha. Choosing the right benchmark is fundamental to an active approach and we work to understand the long-term needs of investors and to ensure benchmark targets are relevant.
- Taking a long-term approach, aligning us with our clients’ interests: The philosophy of our organization is to manage risk from a client perspective, and to incentivize managers on a long-term performance basis, with co-investment a theme. We believe key investors holding equity in their investment team helps to align the interests of clients and the investment managers.
Being a responsible investor means:
- Reliance on strong governance, strategy and culture: We believe companies and other assets will ultimately perform better when led by boards with an appropriate mix of capabilities – as well as a culture of constructive debate and those independent of the asset’s management. We believe the promotion of such enhances the creation of long-term value and we aim to instill this through proactive engagement across all assets in which we invest.
- Awareness of environmental, social and economic sustainability: Our experience has made us recognize environmental and social issues can impact on asset value and risk.
Wilmer Gibson has been built with the aim of delivering sustainable risk-adjusted alpha over the long term. We work to ensure all investment decisions are made in line with client objectives of sustainable value creation and appropriate levels of managed risk.
We recognize that as a fund manager for long-term investors, Wilmer Gibson has a role to play in promoting responsible practices within the industry in which we operate; as well as in the investments we make in companies, countries, instruments and buildings.
We work to ensure Wilmer Gibson meets the highest practical standards of corporate responsibility. We monitor our progress against four key components:
Responsible Investment Management
The Wilmer Gibson ‘responsible investment management’ approach is embedded throughout the organization, being is two-fold:
- As a ‘responsible investor’, i.e. a good owner of the assets we invest in on behalf of our clients.
- As a ‘responsible manager’, taking seriously our fiduciary responsibilities to our clients.
Being a responsible investor means: promoting strong governance, a value creative strategy and culture; awareness of environmental, social and economic sustainability; as well as applying an active engagement approach to public policy and best practice. Being a responsible manager means: transparency, aiming to deliver sustainable risk-adjusted alpha and taking a long-term approach, aligning our interests with those of our clients.
Throughout the organization we are working to establish processes to monitor the application of the framework, based around acting as a ‘good fiduciary’ (responsible management) to our clients and being a ‘good owner’ (responsible investment) of the investments we make on behalf of our clients.
We strive to minimize our direct environmental impact of our operations wherever possible:
- Deliver on management targets to address key impact areas – monitoring performance, and engagement, with employees and our various building managers.
- Pursuing a ‘green office’ management policy to implement improved sustainable office practices.
- The Environmental Overview Committee meets quarterly to review progress and new initiatives to ensure standards are suitably monitored, maintained, and improved where possible.
Our people
Wilmer Gibson is committed to ensuring best practices for all employees in their work environment, personal development, as well as remuneration practices. It remains a priority to attract, manage, develop and retain talent.
Wilmer Gibson believes learning is a career long process and seeks to provide ongoing development opportunities throughout each individual’s career life cycle. We have a dedicated team to support staff training and development.
In addition to senior investment professionals holding an equity stake in the company; investment professionals and other senior employees are required to participate in a bonus deferral and co-investment scheme, investing directly alongside clients in the funds. We believe this creates a strong alignment between the company and our clients.
Monitoring
We pride ourselves on our history and our strong position in the market on governance and remuneration issues – as well as being an employer of choice for high performing individuals. For the purposes of best practice and monitoring, we have policies and procedures covering: being an equal opportunities employer, sabbatical and flexible working arrangements.
Community
Wilmer Gibson engages in a range of community and charity projects in our neighboring community and give something back to those less fortunate. Each employee will be allowed a quota of working days to participate. We have started with the following community projects: transforming a local area by turning it into a vegetable garden; pairing Wilmer Gibson volunteers with children to support them with their reading and comprehension; engaging with local secondary schools to provide additional support in languages and mathematics and also offer the opportunity for work placements at Wilmer Gibson in the school holidays.