Page 6 - Ausbil 2024 Annual ESG Report

Key Activities in 2024
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Annual ESG Report l March 2025
Key activities in 2024
Ausbil’s ESG research maintained a disciplined approach focused on long-term issues such as climate change, modern slavery, and human rights more broadly, as well as other specific issues including corporate governance, corporate culture, diversity and inclusion, cybersecurity, biodiversity, the circular economy and First Nations rights. Our ESG research is always changing. Artificial intelligence, especially how it is used ethically, is one of the areas we keep learning about as it changes quickly. Staying in tune with new regulation, especially sustainability related regulation, geopolitical affairs and other drivers continues to bring new types of risks and opportunities to the forefront.
Our discipline in covering financially material ESG topics often with the same companies over multiple years offers consistency, accountability and helps to drive change in collaboration with both companies and other investors for whom ESG outcomes are critical. We believe investors have a key role to play, either through targeted company- specific engagements or through collaborative engagement and advocacy activities. Individual endeavour coupled with focused collaboration can bring major change to how companies behave across the ESG spectrum.
During 2024, Ausbil had 237 company interactions involving one or more ESG topics. We engaged extensively and regularly with 115 of these companies on specific ESG issues and their performance on sustainability measures. These figures exclude other industry engagements such as conferences where we presented to a multitude of representatives from companies on issues including climate change and decarbonisation, modern slavery and supply chains, culture and governance, among many other topics. Most of these engagements dealt ‘S’ issues (29% of meetings), though a mix of different E, S and G issues was the most prevalent (35% of all engagements).
In our research universe of the top 200 companies in Australia, as proxied by the S&P/ ASX 200, we usually engage directly with executive management and with boards. We prefer to engage holistically as part of general meetings with the company in which we participate with Ausbil’s portfolio managers and equity analysts. This helps our ESG researchers understand the overall context of a company’s fundamental performance and activities. It also shows companies that we are serious about ESG in our overall view on valuation and performance.
Ausbil has an annual ESG engagement plan, which, as far as practicable, includes milestone targets and desired outcomes. The engagement process aims to find and understand the best practices from around the world, no matter what ESG topic is being discussed. It also encourages companies to use these best practices in their ESG and sustainability work.