Our advocacy partnerships

This is why we have made a dual commitment in 2021 to the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative and the Science-Based Targets initiative to set interim and long-term decarbonisation targets to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

These commitments are supported by our long-standing membership in Climate Action 100+, a coalition of investors that engage the 167 most emitting companies in the world to help them reduce their GHG emissions – this allows to support the transition for over 80% of global industrial emissions. Within CA100+, we have targeted our efforts by taking a particularly active role in the engagements with Glencore and OMV.

We have been part of the Institutional Investor Group for Climate Change (IIGCC) since 2013. We are also strong supporters of Ceres, a leading environmental NGO in North-America notably around the topic of water. In particular, we are currently using our voice to push for the creation of an investor coalition to engage companies on broader environmental topics, such as adaptation and resilience, biodiversity or water, all of which are inherently interlinked.

Finally, we are members of FAIRR, an investor network focused on ESG risks in the global food sector, in which we have been an active signatory of several investor letters.

This is why we spearheaded an industry initiative with SSF to remove controversial weapons manufacturers from mainstream benchmarks and indices in 2019, as they are banned by international conventions and should not be investable. In fact, they have been excluded them from our own investments since 2011.

Pictet joined the Access to Nutrition initiative (ATNI) in 2018, an initiative that focuses on developing tools and initiatives that track and drive the contributions made by the 25 largest food & beverage companies to addressing the world’s global nutritional challenges. At Pictet, we leverage ATNI to take an active role in collaborative engagements on the nutritional value of these companies’ products, their commitment to providing affordable nutrition, and the responsibility of their marketing practices.

Pictet is also a member of the UN Global Compact, an organisation calling companies to align strategies and operations with universal principles on human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption, and take actions that advance societal goals. This is particularly important as we place a specific focus on engaging with companies that violates on of the UNGC principles.

Finally, Pictet has been steadily improving its diversity and inclusion, notably through the obtention of the EDGE certification, the leading global assessment methodology for gender and intersectional equity. It measures where organisations stand in terms of representation, pay equity, effectiveness of policies & practices to ensure equitable career flows, and inclusiveness of the culture. Efforts to continue improvement in this area are ongoing.

Pictet is also an early signatory of the Principles for Responsible Investing in 2007, which commits us to integrating ESG criteria in our investment processes and ownership practices with a view to enhancing returns and/or mitigating risks. We also aim to embed ESG in our risk management and reporting tools to maintain high standards of transparency and accountability. We are also signatories of the Principles for Responsible Banking since 2019, which provide a framework that serves as an important and complementary next step to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment. This framework focuses on the types of products and solutions provided to clients and how these ultimately create value for clients as well as for all other stakeholders. This is an essential step on the road towards a more sustainable financial system.

Transparency is only as good as the data that is displayed - we are  committed to improving its quality across the board, especially where it is not abundant. As  private markets represent a growing allocation in client portfolios, we see this as an area where standards and convergence need to be developed and strengthened. This is why we have participated in the creation of the ESG Data Convergence Project in Private Equity to advance an initial standardised set of ESG metrics and mechanisms for comparative reporting, in collaboration with leading global General Partners (GPs) and Limited Partners (LPs) representing more than USD 4 trillion in assets under management. The objective is to streamline the private equity industry’s historically fragmented approach to collecting and reporting ESG data to create a critical mass of material, performance-based, comparable ESG data from portfolio companies.