For over 25 years, RobecoSAM has been at the forefront of sustainable investing (SI). Today, it is Robeco’s sustainability ingredient brand, used to designate selected SI intelligence and research.  

RobecoSAM-labeled strategies guarantee a state of the art impact approach. This is true of all our sustainable thematic strategies, but applies equally to our equity and fixed income impact strategies. 

All of these strategies have been designed to have a positive, measurable impact on the environment and society and to contribute to the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But there’s more. RobecoSAM also designates Robeco’s range of rankings of both companies and countries in terms of their sustainability to help investors make responsible choices. In a nutshell, sustainability impacts everything we do. Our SI ingredient brand is an assurance that sustainability takes center stage at Robeco.

The one thing we cannot do is nothing. Our Sustainability Inside approach, which uses ESG building blocks, is applied to the majority of our strategies. As of September 2020, we have more than 138 billion EUR assets integrating ESG. We tailor our solutions to individual risk budgets and SI needs, while ensuring ESG information is consistently integrated into our investment processes.

With an extensive range of impact investing products, we also cater to investors with explicit ESG targets, like environmental footprint reduction, investors who wish to contribute to the SDGs, or invest in themes, like water or gender equality.

A team of engagement specialists maintains an active dialogue with 200 companies to influence corporate behavior. They also vote at around 5,000 shareholder meetings, creating real change. For example, following our engagement, Shell agreed to set short-term targets for cutting carbon emissions, and will link executive pay to meeting these objectives for the first time. We endorse numerous codes of conduct and principles. Robeco is a PRI signatory, a participant in the UNGC and the ICGN. We have also signed the Dutch SDG Investing Agenda and several local stewardship codes. 

You can embark on sustainability investing in small steps. What we see at Robeco is that, as knowledge of and experience in SI increase across the organization, so does conviction. Nothing is impossible.