Kempen Capital Management is an asset manager that believes in stewardship and investment focusing on the long-term for the benefit of all stakeholders. Value creation is at the heart of the services we provide to our clients. We believe that being an engaged shareholder on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and retaining a long-term focus, is critical to helping our clients to preserve and create sustainable wealth that has positive real world impact and economic returns.

Kempen wide approach to responsible investment

We are committed to create sustainable alpha. The four pillars of our ESG-policy are:

• ESG integration: Ensuring sustainability risks and opportunities are adequately considered in our investment analysis and processes.

• Exclusion & avoidance: Not investing in companies involved in controversial activities or conduct.

• Active ownership: Being responsible stewards of our clients’ capital and using our influence through engagement and voting to improve corporate behaviour on specific ESG issues and achieve positive change

• Positive impact: Investing with an objective to achieve positive real world outcomes and impact, such as contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

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To put our mission and vision into practice we engage with our investee companies on a wide array of strategic, financial, and ESG topics. As an active owner we use our influence to improve our investee companies’ ESG performance.  This helps us address some of the most pressing and important sustainability issues facing business and the world. Our focus themes for engagement are: human rights, labour rights, climate change and governance.

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Through collaboration with other investors and industry think tanks we contribute to the development of principles and standards of corporate responsibility both at sector levels, as well as investee company level.

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Our full voting records are available here.

Our fund approach to responsible investment

Sustainability is at the heart of the Kempen Global Sustainable Value Creation Fund and thus Kempen’s ESG policy is fully implemented in our fund’s investment process. The figure 'ESG integration in the investment process' offers a step-by-step illustration of this implementation in our fund’s investment process.

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Our belief is that there is an ongoing transition to a more sustainable economy, and that this generates both risks and opportunities. By investing in sustainable companies, and engaging on ESG-topics, we achieve impact and attractive financial returns. Our ESG framework evaluates exposure to potential sustainable growth drivers and the ability of a company to take advantage of these drivers based on business model, incentives, innovation capacity and strategy. Contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals is also used to measure the impact and exposure of a company.

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1. Exclusion

The fund ranks around 160 sub-industries to find those showing supportive characteristics for sustainable growth. Exposure to the Sustainable Development Goals and ESG risks are taken into account in this step. Risks affecting an entire industry (e.g. regulatory changes, market price shocks, unfair competition) will lower the overall score of the industry, making it less attractive.

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We have a hard exclusion of certain activities based on sustainability. Amongst others these include fossil fuels, weapons, tobacco, nuclear energy, adult entertainment, gambling and GMO.

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2. ESG integration

Once inappropriate industries have been screened from our investment universe, our ‘scan on quality’ process selects specific companies based on sustainable growth opportunities and attractive returns on capital. At this step, a positive selection of companies with an ESG rating of BB and higher takes place. The hurdle of BB is chosen to remain flexible in our investment universe and to be able to select companies with ESG improvement potential. As shown in the figure 'ESG Ratings', dated for 2018, the majority of our holdings tend to rate ‘A’ or above.

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A fundamental analysis of the selected companies follows this step. The fundamental analysis consists of a Company Score model and a Valuation Model. The Company Score model assesses the quality of the business and translates it into a weighted average cost of capital (WACC) as input for the Valuation Model. ESG is the second largest individual component of the total company score. The Valuation Model measures our expected future value creation and incorporates revenue growth based on ESG opportunities.

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In the final step the portfolio is formed, with a weighting based on quality, valuation and liquidity

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3. Active ownership

The Fund aims to have a continuous dialogue with all companies in its portfolio to understand the company very well, improve shareholder returns and drive the sustainability of the company.

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Exercising our voting rights is an essential part of our responsible investment philosophy. ISS provides us with voting recommendations based on our own voting and governance policy. Items are further analysed on a case by case basis.�

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Kempen’s ESG Team monitors our portfolios and may propose engagement with low ESG performers. In a quarterly challenging session the companies in our portfolios are discussed and an action list is created based on the outcomes of this meeting.�

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In 2018 we engaged on issues such as: remuneration, environmental targets, sustainability of the value chain, privacy and data security, money laundering, bribery and ESG integration. One result was that a company publicly disclosed their animal testing policy, and another was a company agreeing to publish their first corporate responsible report in 2019.�

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4. Impact

In the first instance, the fund creates positive impact by allocating capital to the companies helping deliver the transition to a more sustainable economy. Our approach results in a bias to ESG leaders and a higher exposure to the Sustainable Development Goals. Management is incentivized this way to improve their ESG profile as they know they will be rewarded in the financial markets as a sustainable company with access and a lower cost of capital.�

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Secondly, impact is achieved by acting as an active owner and working with the company to improve strategy and operations around specific ESG issues. We expect management of a company to strike a balance between the interests of the different stakeholders. Value creation is more than financial returns. Employment growth, culture, diversity, resource efficiency, carbon emissions, R&D and customer satisfaction are also important outcomes.�

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As a hard target for our impact, the Fund’s Carbon Intensity aims to be at least 50% lower than its investible universe. As shown in the figure 'Carbon footprint' this was a target we comfortably achieved in 2018. We also aim for 50% of the companies have a direct contribution to the SDGs with their products and services.

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You can find the engagement factsheet of NN Group here.

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^{Although Kempen Capital Management N.V.’s information providers, including without limitation, MSCI ESG Research LLC and its affiliates (the “ESG Parties”), obtain information from sources they consider reliable, none of the ESG Parties warrants or guarantees the originality, accuracy and/or completeness of any data herein. None of the ESG Parties makes any express or implied warranties of any kind, and the ESG Parties hereby expressly disclaim all warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, with respect to any data herein. None of the ESG Parties shall have any liability for any errors or omissions in connection with any data herein. Further, without limiting any of the foregoing, in no event shall any of the ESG Parties have any liability for any direct, indirect, special, punitive, consequential or any other damages (including lost profits) even if notified of the possibility of such damages.}