Principle 7 - How we report on stewardship to our clients

We recognise the importance of being accountable to our clients and their advisers on stewardship and voting activities. We aim to provide transparency on our stewardship activities through our regular client reports and other information reported publicly online.

Our segregated pension fund clients receive quarterly reports detailing how we have voted their shares and, upon request, we provide our clients with customised reports on our engagement activities. On occasion, our engagements with investee companies relate to matters which are extremely confidential and/or where disclosure of our engagement activities might be counterproductive or harm our clients' best interests. In such circumstances, which are exceptional, confidentiality is paramount to achieving the stewardship objective and therefore, the engagement is not reported to our clients.

In addition to the reports described above, we provide full transparency of our voting activity, in the UK and Europe, on our website which is available to all customers.

We are aware of the importance our clients and their advisers attach to our engagement and voting processes operating effectively. Therefore, we obtain and publicly disclose appropriate independent assurance about our voting processes and, in doing so we have regard to the applicable professional standards and guidance governing such assurance. We intend to investigate the extension of the independent assurance to our engagement processes during the next assurance cycle.