Responsible Investment

As a responsible investor, with over $646 billion assets under management (AUM) as of 31 March 2023, stewardship activities are an integral part of our investment process. By helping investee companies improve their ESG position, we can maximise long-term investment returns for our clients. Our stewardship activities consist of three key pillars: engagement with companies (constructive and purposeful dialogue), the exercise of voting rights and initiatives that encourage companies to improve their response to ESG issues.

Aiming for impactful results, we collaborate with global initiatives:  we are signatories of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) since 2006 and the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAMI), as examples. Our stewardship activities are led by a dedicated team based in Tokyo, the UK and the US, working closely with our credit and equity research analysts.

Sustainable growth of investee companies drives growth in earnings, and growth in earnings drives growth in dividends and wages which, ultimately, benefits household economies and the growth of the economy as a whole. All of this together is known as the investment chain. At SuMi TRUST, we actively utilize our role as an asset manager in the investment chain to support our investee companies to create value, leading to maximum returns for our clients, while at the same time contributing to the achievement of the SDGs.

Our mission is to raise the level of medium-to-long-term corporate value and of the overall market and secure excess returns which will help us in maximizing medium-to-long-term investment returns for our clients. In order to achieve this goal, we are also focused on making our engagement activities more efficient and effective by identifying the challenges that each of our investee companies face.