Stewardship report 2023

Download our stewardship report to learn more about our culture of stewardship and how we’re encouraging action to mitigate and adapt to systemic risks through our global engagement efforts.

What does stewardship mean to us?

Review the highlights of our stewardship work over the past year and discover what it means to our clients, employees, and the communities we serve.

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"To us, strong stewardship is inseparable from good investing."

—Paul R. Lorentz, President and CEO, Global Wealth and Asset Management

Our beliefs support our culture of stewardship

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Sustainability factors can have a material impact on financial value

We believe sustainability factors can materially affect financial value; therefore, we integrate financially material ESG risks and opportunities into our investing process.1

Active managers have a stewardship advantage

We believe active managers are well placed to manage stewardship effectively, as we’re able to bring our experience to work with company management to encourage effective change aimed at enhancing the long-term value of client portfolios. 

Where we operate assets, we believe it's our responsibility to pursue the best sustainability processes and standards for our clients, our firm, and our employees.

We believe in offering clients sustainable investing choices

We believe in offering choices to investors, from ESG integration to impact investments. A broad range of products and services enables investors to better meet an equally broad range of goals.

1 We seek to incorporate material sustainability considerations throughout the stages of our investment and asset ownership lifecycles, taking into account the characteristics of the asset class and investment process in question, as well as industry and geography, among other factors. Each investment team operates in different markets and with different nuances to its approach to investing. Accordingly, each team integrates sustainability factors into its investment process in a manner that best aligns with its investment approach. Exceptions to this are strategies where a sustainability integrated investment approach is impractical or impossible; for example, in relation to certain instrument types where sustainable comparable alternatives are unavailable, passive products, funds that invest in deriative instruments, products managed in accordance with specific client objectives, and delegation to third-party investment managers. Refer to Manulife Investment Management's sustainable investing and sustainability risk statement for further details.

Active stewardship in action

We believe active ownership practices are at the center of good stewardship, helping drive strong risk-adjusted investment return potential for our clients over time while we seek to make a positive impact on the environment and society. 

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Related sustainability viewpoints

The continuing evolution of investment stewardship

The assignment of new client mandates is increasingly at stake in discussions of stewardship. We explore facets of asset owner urgency around stewardship and sustainability performance.
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The global water challenge: risks and opportunities that all investors should consider

Manulife Investment Management is committed to helping clients achieve their objectives, build resilient portfolios—including in relation to climate change—and, where appropriate, positively affect nature. We believe water-related risks and opportunities can be financially material factors that should be integrated into investment strategies and operational asset management.
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Investing in the power of nature

The crisis facing the world’s biodiversity has become front of mind for policymakers and investors in recent years. Investing in natural capital—the world’s stock of natural resources that combine to yield a flow of benefits—represents an exciting investment innovation that can achieve a range of positive impacts and create opportunities outside of traditional investment silos.
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