ESG Integration, the cornerstone of IFM's responsible investment and stewardship approach
IFM Investors has been focusing on integrating ESG considerations into investment decisions and ongoing asset management activities for well over a decade. We do this because it adds an additional layer of risk and opportunity assessment that
we believe can enhance the long-term financial performance of our investments.
In practice, ESG integration means we systematically and explicitly consider ESG data alongside financial data to shape our decisions throughout the investment process. We also seek to embed ESG considerations in our stewardship activities. We
aim to take an active role in influencing the behaviour of investee companies through ongoing dialogue and exercising our voting rights to influence positive change, with the aim of enhancing the long-term net performance and market reputation
of investee companies.
While investment teams across each of our asset classes currently tailor their ESG integration practices to their specific strategies, a high level overview of our approach is illustrated below.
All IFM investment teams work closely with the Responsible Investment team throughout the investment process. This helps to ensure our practices align to our Responsible Investment Charter and ESG Policy and continue to evolve over time, as we focus on protecting and growing long-term investment value and returns on behalf of our investors and their members and beneficiaries.
About the author
Executive Director, Head of Large Cap Active Equities
Lachlan Davis
Joined in 2016
Lachlan leads IFM Investors’ Large Cap Active Equities Team and has more than 20 years of experience in managing equity portfolios. He began his career as a graduate with Shell, then completed an MBA at the Australian Graduate School of Management, which included an exchange to the Stern Business School in New York. He joined AMP Investments in 1996, as part of the Investment Solutions team headed by Dr Jack Gray with a focus on delivering innovative solutions to large institutional clients across a wide range of asset classes. This included work across Equities, Fixed Income, Hedge Funds and infrastructure. In 1997 he joined the Active Quantitative Team in Australian Equities to develop a Long-Short strategy which was launched in 2001. He was responsible, along with Mark McClatchey, for driving a number of innovations including the integration of fundamental and quantitative techniques and further research and refinement of a factor based approach to investing. The team evolved to become the Multi-Strategy Team, which encompassed Enhanced Index, Value, Quantitative, Long-Short (130/30) and Asia-Pacific Market Neutral strategies. These strategies all used a common base of factor investing and were applied over different risk tolerances, horizons and investment markets and could be tailored to the individual institutions bespoke requirements. While at AMP, Lachlan was involved in quantitative research, risk management, portfolio construction, corporate assessment, stock research, business development and management. He was a member of the AMP Global Equities & Fixed Income leadership team and the AMP Investment Committee. At IFM Lachlan is a member of the IFM Risk Committee and Equities Leadership Group. Lachlan was a Director of Scallop Credit Union during his time at Shell and a Director of Gove Aluminium Finance, an AMP/CSR joint venture, during his time at AMP.