Active Ownership

Responsible Investment Principles

QIC’s six Responsible Investment Principles support the achievement of sustainable long-term risk-adjusted investment returns across QIC’s investment teams through the systematic consideration of ESG factors. The principles outline QIC’s ESG philosophy applied across each of QIC’s investment teams.

QIC’s six principles have recently been updated to reflect the ongoing evolution of our ESG approach.

1. Our fundamental duty is to deliver long term investment outcomes to our clients, and we consider material environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in all our investment decisions to build well-informed views of investment risk and opportunity.
2. As an investor in real estate, infrastructure, fixed income and private equity, we understand that ESG issues vary in type and materiality across asset classes and sectors and we target our ESG approach accordingly.
3. We invest time in building a detailed understanding of material ESG factors and we apply our knowledge to develop practical solutions to ESG issues across all our investment portfolios.
4. We are an active asset manager and have a longstanding philosophy of engaging with portfolio companies on their ESG strategy, operations and performance.
5. Generally, we believe engaging with a company is a more effective responsible investment approach in bringing about outcomes than divestment, we engage both directly and collaboratively with other investors depending on what’s right for the situation.
6. Responsible Investment is an evolving discipline and we work to test, review and continually improve our ESG approach and integration practices.

The principles are reflected in our Responsible Investment Policy and Proxy Voting Standards, which govern our approach to Responsible Investment.

Industry memberships and participation

We continue to engage and collaborate through a number of industry forums. This allows us the opportunity to contribute to the development of a range of initiatives while gaining relevant insights into the latest developments in the ESG space. Our current memberships and partnerships include:

• United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI)
• Responsible Investment Association of Australasia
• Investor Group on Climate Change
• Property Council of Australia (PCA)
• Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB)
• Green Building Council Australia (GBCA)
• Climate Action 100+
• Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative (ASFI)
• Climate Measurement Standards Initiative

As a signatory to the UN PRI we undergo an annual survey to assess the ESG performance, alongside 3000 asset owners and asset managers around the world. Collectively, QIC achieved the top score of A+ across ten reporting modules for 2020. The only exception to this, and which we’re actively working on, is the Listed Equity Active Ownership module where we achieved a B.  Click here to read QIC's UN PRI’s 2020 Assessment Report. 

PROXY VOTING 

As part of manager selection, we formally assess the ESG capability of external managers and monitor external managers’ proxy voting polices on an ongoing basis to ensure alignment with QIC’s responsible investment approach.

Our Proxy Voting Standard delegates the exercising of proxy voting rights to our external managers. Under this arrangement, QIC has the right to override an external manager’s voting instructions. QIC seeks to vote on all resolutions through our external managers. For all eligible securities, QIC aims to exercise proxy voting rights, except where there are practical or financial impediments that prevent participation.  

We monitor our external managers’ proxy voting activity through a third-party provider Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). Throughout 2019-2020 we implemented a consolidated view of our external manager’s voting activity and as a result have been able to enhance our approach to exercising voting rights. For more information on QIC’s proxy voting from 1 July 2019 – 30 June 2020, please refer to our Sustainability Report.