UK Stewardship Code

This year’s report closely follows the Financial Reporting Council’s UK Stewardship Code reporting requirements. It covers a broad range of subjects and is primarily designed to outline our approach to sustainable and responsible investment.

We are proud members of the UK Stewardship Code - recognised globally as a best practice benchmark in investment stewardship.

The UK Stewardship Code sets high stewardship standards and is built around 12 principles of effective stewardship. It was updated in 2021 with a greater emphasis placed on transparency standards around stewardship activities than the 2012 code it replaced. 

Investing sustainably for the long term

As long-term investors, we take our stewardship role seriously and appreciate we have a duty to represent our clients values as we build relationships with company management and investor relation teams.

These actions can have significant influence and help to build support for the adoption of best practice across the market over time. A number of case examples from investee firms have been included within this year's report to showcase these in practice.

Making an impact

For the second successive year, we engaged independent consultants to analyse the ESG performance of the funds within our sustainable range. All of the equity funds were benchmarked against their respective comparators, so that we can measure the outcomes our funds achieve against factors such as their carbon footprint, waste and water performance, executive pay ratios and other social or environmental factors.

Across the range, all of the funds scored better than their respective benchmarks in terms of having fewer carbon emissions, lower ratios of executive to employee pay, more investments allocated to environmental and social good (for example, renewable energy, educational services, healthcare) and fewer investments that create environmental and social harm (for example, oil and gas, plastic production, tobacco, gambling in casinos).

We hope this report demonstrates the importance of stewardship and engagement at Castlefield, and goes some way to explain why we are known as the Thoughtful Investor ®.