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Corporate sustainability
Our purpose
Fidelity International’s purpose is to work together to build better financial futures. It focuses on the importance of collaboration to our business - working together both with one another as colleagues, and in partnership with our clients. And it also underlines our focus on sustainable, long-term outcomes, together with an aspirational focus on the future.
We incorporate sustainability into our business operations and our investment process. We do this for and together with all our stakeholders, including our customers, employees, suppliers, investee companies, regulators and policy makers and the communities in which we operate. We take responsibility for our impact on society as a whole and the environment.
Sustainable business operations
We believe we have a role to play in improving access to financial services through education and advocacy with the aim of increased financial inclusion and wellness. We strive to help our diverse and talented colleagues achieve their full potential and to make our supply chain more accessible to a wider range of businesses. We will help to create a better future for the environment by minimising the impact of our business operations through meaningful business transformation.
Our core values are Integrity and Trust. Together, these drive how we work with each other and with our clients, customers and partners.
We critically evaluate our governance practices and standards to ensure that we run our operations and make business decisions in a transparent, sound and ethical manner that meets industry best practices and is in full compliance with laws and regulations in all the jurisdictions in which we operate.
Our community
Financial inclusion is an essential part of improving people’s social and economic mobility. We are passionate about improving access for those that have traditionally been excluded through education and advocacy.
We are reaching deep into workplaces to support financial wellness and supporting people to build better financial futures for themselves and their families. We have also taken these initiatives public, to help as many people as possible engage in their own financial wellbeing.
Over the last three years, we have been raising awareness of the gender investment and pensions gap through our award-winning global ‘Women and Money’ campaign. Bringing together media, policy makers and the financial services industry, the campaign has successfully highlighted the issues preventing women from accessing financial services and brought together a range of stakeholders to discuss and develop solutions.
In order to provide a path for a diverse mix of young people from all social backgrounds into the world of asset management, we participate in industry-wide efforts such as #100BlackInterns, the Catalyst After School Programme, the Real World Project and She Can Be.
Our employee Corporate Social Responsibility Committees donate almost $1million a year to causes in their local communities, with a strong focus on tackling social disadvantage and the environment.
Fidelity International is proud to support the Fidelity UK and international Foundations, all independent charitable organisations that support non-profit organisations in countries where Fidelity International has a presence.
Our employees
Our goal is to create a safe and healthy work environment. We are committed to building a culture where all of our employees feel welcomed, valued and supported. We understand that a diverse workforce and an inclusive workplace brings benefits for our customers, our business and our people.
Our focus is on enhancing the opportunity for all of our employees to thrive in their careers. In 2019, we achieved our target to have 30% of senior management positions globally held by women. We have now set a new target for 35% of senior management positions globally to be held by women by December 2023. We have also set a target to employ five additional Black senior managers by December 2023. Our company-wide Enhanced Parental Leave policy enables fathers and secondary carers to take the same amount of paid leave as mothers and primary carers.
We are proud to be the only asset manager to be recognised as a Stonewall Top Global Employer for our efforts on LGBT+ Inclusion and Equality. We have made public commitments to the UN LGBTI Standards of Conduct for Business, the Women in Finance Charter, the Valuable 500 (disability inclusion) and the Race at Work Charter. Our efforts in this space have been shaped by our employee Diversity and Inclusion networks globally.
We are committed to supporting all our employees to continuously grow, develop and flourish. We hold regular employee engagement surveys to ensure we are listening to the views of our people and to help us shape a great employee experience.
We believe in a culture in which every employee is provided with the resources, equipment, training and empowerment to discharge their responsibility to achieve the highest practical safety standards for themselves, those whom they manage, their colleagues and others that are affected by Fidelity’s business activities.
Our suppliers
Supply chain sustainability has been one of our main engagement themes as investors and we intend to apply the same rules to our own supply chain. Our suppliers are expected to comply with our Supplier Code of Conduct which sets out our standards, values and principles. Sustainability-related questions are included in all our tenders and have a bearing on the overall scoring and selection process. We established a Sustainability Delivery Group in 2020 to lead our Responsible Supply Chain programme. Three pathways have been identified:
- equal opportunity to compete for Fidelity business achieved through supplier diversity,
- prompt payment to demonstrate fair treatment of our partners,
- supply chain sustainability monitoring on environment, labour & human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement to ensure transparency and identify blind spots requiring remediation.
Our environment
We aim to conduct current and future business operations in a sustainable manner to help create a better future for the environment. Our Environmental Sustainability framework is designed to ensure pollution prevention, carbon reduction, waste minimisation, responsible use of resources and compliance with legislation through good practice and continuous improvement.
Climate change is arguably the most pressing threat facing our planet, and poses significant risks to the long-term profitability and sustainability of companies.
We take a pro-active approach to minimising our own environmental footprint. We are committed to achieve net zero emissions by 2040 for Fidelity International’s operational emissions, including all scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions we have direct control of.
Our focus will be on reduction of emissions through operational changes and investment in operational efficiencies, on-site renewals and purchasing of renewable energy whilst offsetting those we are unable to eradicate.
We are also signatories of Climate Action 100+, a supporter of the Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), members of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), the Carbon Disclosure Project, and a partner of the Climate Bond Initiative.
Sustainable investing
We believe investing in companies with high standards of sustainability can protect and enhance investment returns in the long term and therefore contribute to our corporate objective of building better financial futures for our clients.
Our approach to ESG is bottom up - we seek to understand how our clients, regulators and society perceive the value of ESG in the development of their domestic economy and capital markets. For example, in China - poverty alleviation; social stability and anti-corruption or in Japan - corporate reform and efficiency as measured by financial metrics like return on equity and total shareholder return.
We express our strong preference for engagement with companies in preference to exclusion of sectors or industries. We believe we can create more positive change by exercising our rights of ownership to improve the focus of Boards and management teams on their sustainability and stakeholder responsibilities. Given the breadth and depth of global capital markets, we believe exclusion simply moves this responsibility to another capital provider - such as private equity or distressed debt buyers - who may or may not have the same incentives and goals.
We believe in the value of collaboration over competition. We seek to work in partnership with the industry, with regulators, clients and civil society organisations to amplify our voice and our influence to create positive change in the companies and value chains in which we invest.