Stewardship Statement
In 2018 we became a signatory to ACSI's voluntary Australian Asset Owners Stewardship Code. Our stewardship statement can be found here:
https://www.cbussuper.com.au/content/dam/cbus/files/governance/reporting/Stewardship-Statement.pdf
Responsible Investment Principles
The September 2017 our Investment Committee meeting endorsed Responsible Investment Principles. The intention of these Principles is to communicate to our managers the ESG issues important to us as a Fund. These Principles are also reflected in our active ownership where applicable and cover issues such as climate change, cognitive diversity, health and safety, Labour and human rights in direct operations and supply chains and product supply chains.
Voting
The Fund’s voting practices domestically and internationally are predominantly based on the ACSI Corporate Governance Guidelines to ensure consistency of our voting process.
The Fund will contact companies pre or post vote when in members best interests.
Engagement
The Fund engages with a broad range of stakeholders including its investment managers and listed and unlisted companies in which it invests to promote sustainable value creation in the companies in which we invest.
The Fund's engagement program uses multiple mechanisms to protect and enhance the value of its member’s equity holdings. Engagement can be undertaken directly (both on a strategic and ad hoc basis), in collaboration with other investors, or through external service providers.
There are three methods of engagement:
- Direct engagement with companies that represent our largest Australian share holdings and ad hoc issues on issues such as those outlined in our Responsible Investment Principles.
- Collaborative engagements, for example through the Climate Action 100+ (to secure climate change commitments from Boards of large companies)-
- Service provider engagements, through ACSI for ASX300 share holdings and through Hermes EOS for our global share holdings.
If ongoing engagement has been unsuccessful, or a company has been unresponsive, we have an escalation process in place.