Sustainability as a driver of long-term investment outcomes

Andrew Craig: Hello and welcome to this week’s BNP Paribas Asset Management Talking Heads podcast. Every week, Talking Heads will bring you in-depth insights and analysis through the lens of sustainability on the topics that really matter to investors. In this episode, we’ll be discussing our new revised edition of the Global Sustainability Strategy. This provides the framework for action on the environmental, social and governance considerations that are embedded in our investment processes and are grounded in the conviction that traditional financial analysis alone is insufficient to capture all the risks and opportunities in today’s global economy.

I’m Andy Craig, Co-Head of the Investment Insights Centre, and I’m joined today by Jane Ambachtsheer, Chief Sustainability Officer at BNP Paribas Asset Management. Welcome, Jane. Thank you for joining me today.

Jane Ambachtsheer: Thanks, Andy. It’s a pleasure to be here.

AC: Can you explain why we need [a] Global Sustainability Strategy?

JA: Well, sustainability, is a core part of how we invest and how we operate as an entity, so it’s important to have a strategy which really articulates how we go about doing that and what our objectives are.

Our previous sustainability strategy took us to 2026, so it was time for us to launch our new one, which we’ve recently done, which takes us out to 2030. The other important component of our new strategy is that it reflects our new entity having evolved and completed the integration of AXA Investment Managers, which now results in BNP Paribas Asset Management being one of the world’s 10 largest investors, with over €1.7 trillion in AUM (assets under management) across liquid and alternative asset classes and a local presence in 35 countries.

So given our new size and scale, it was also certainly time for an evolved approach to our global sustainability strategy.

AC: How does the sustainability strategy fit with the new corporate strategy for the combined entity? What are the key components and how has it evolved?

JA: When we launched at the beginning of 2026 ‘AMplify 2030’, the overall strategy for the new entity, we identified sustainability as one of the core enablers of how we’ll achieve that strategy. That then opened the door for us to publish this new specialised strategy really focused on sustainability.

As a long-term investor, we believe our client outcomes and real economy outcomes are closely connected. Resilient companies, well-functioning markets and sustainable economic growth are really fundamental to the long-term returns our clients seek.

Our strategy sets out our forward-looking priorities and milestones through [to] 2030 and is organised around the pillars of how we achieve that. So, a focus on the future and identifying system level risks around how we do ESG research and due diligence stewardship. Our approach around articulating responsible business conduct expectations which can lead to different exclusions. Our approach to sustainable products and solutions and also around leading by example – our approach to our own culture, sustainability education and the corporate responsibility practices that we’re adopting for our own entity.

AC: How does this new strategy enable us to deliver the best outcomes for our clients?

JA: That’s at the core of everything we do. Our strategy is built for clients, informed by our clients’ expectations and what we believe best practice to be in the global market.

The first [thing] is around making sure we’re helping our clients navigate a changing world. We know that the world is being reshaped by a number of powerful forces:

• Environmental pressures: reshaping industries, supply chains, capital allocation, presenting both risks and opportunities
• Technology and innovation: creating new technologies, disrupting business models, creating different opportunities
• Demographic shifts: transforming labour markets, changes to inequality around the world, consumption patterns and ageing
• Geopolitical developments: influencing trade, energy security, energy systems, our approach to climate in nature and access to resources around the world in this changing geopolitical framework.

These megatrends are inter-connected and we try and take a forward-looking lens to help our clients navigate them through understanding the risks and the opportunities that they present. So that’s the broader macro perspective.

We also believe that by integrating ESG considerations alongside financial analysis from a bottom-up asset class perspective, we can have better insights and make better decisions on behalf of our clients.

So sustainability is not a separate investment decision. It’s an important component of informed decision-making from an asset class basis. One of the new evolutions in terms of our overall framework is that we now embed sustainability expertise across the different asset classes.

We have a central team which I lead, which is really responsible for driving the overall strategy and ambition, with our global leadership team overseeing stewardship, supporting our clients, supporting our overall external commitments and reporting stewardship and CSR (corporate social responsibility).

Then we have a number of sustainability experts embedded across the organisation within the different asset classes, reporting up to the different CIOs to make sure we have best quality ESG data, tools, research capabilities embedded into our investment decisions.

That takes me to this final point – the fact that the strategy is built for clients. We have clients from all around the world. They have different objectives, regulatory environments and sustainability preferences. To be able to cater to those different clients, we offer a range of investment approaches and have the opportunity to build structured, custom[ised] sustainability portfolios for our clients.

We have clients optimising around their own preferences or the preferences of their beneficiaries, whether that’s measuring a positive contribution to some of the specific sustainable development goals, achieving certain net zero alignment outcomes, measuring and achieving a certain carbon footprint reduction target.

Different clients have different preferences. A big part of our strategy and our new size and scale is that we have the ability to bring the firm in terms of helping our clients to achieve the best outcomes for them, tapping into the resources across BNP Paribas Asset Management, but also often working in partnership with our colleagues and the broader resources across BNP Paribas Group.

AC: Of course, there are implications for us, BNP Paribas Asset Management as a firm and our own practices. Can you talk us through those?

JA: At the end of the day, we’re a people business. Our people, the intellectual capital that they bring, their relationships with clients, are the greatest opportunity for embedding sustainability into who we are, how we deliver investment outcomes and how we’re operating as an entity.

So we have a strong focus on integrating sustainability into our culture and our own corporate practices. This is one of the unique differentiators for the way we’re approaching sustainability as an organisation.

In terms of our own corporate reporting, we seek to meet and exceed the standards and expectations we’re setting for the companies we’re investing in. That’s really important to our credibility as an asset manager – to live up to those expectations where we’re asking others to do the same.

We have a strong focus on sustainability education and we’ve developed different training pathways for different portions of our population, depending on their existing levels of expertise and focus areas – whether it’s investment teams or legal teams or client-facing teams – to make sure they have the right opportunities around internal training, but also the opportunity to pursue external certifications or training programmes.

We also have a strong focus on being active in the communities where we’re operating –volunteering, philanthropy and developing partnerships with organisations in different communities. Also our annual Community Impact Week, where we have a volunteering fair that we set up around our offices around the world, which is really a chance to engage in some of those organisations, but also to further enhance our internal community, give employees an opportunity to spend time together and spend time giving back.

So there’s a rich ecosystem of things we’re doing internally around creating awareness, providing educational opportunities and volunteering engagement opportunities for colleagues across the different offices around the world in BNP Paribas Asset Management.

AC: Can you talk [to] us about the key upcoming milestones and how you’ll be measuring success as we go forward?

JA: The first and most important measure of success is that we’re able to deliver the outcomes that our clients are engaging us to deliver. That’s front and centre for what we’re doing around our overall sustainability strategy.

But we will also continue to provide our annual sustainability report, which includes progress across all of the different six pillars of our sustainability strategy, including stewardship, which is an area of significant interest for many of our clients. We’re happy to be able to continue to evolve the level of detail around our different approaches for stewardship, be it statistics across the whole platform, a rich range of different examples of company engagement, as well as public policy advocacy.

Later this year, we’ll also be updating our new Net Zero commitment as a combined entity. That’s something we’ve committed to publish and we’ll be sharing in the coming months. We’ll also be introducing our new progress monitor in our next annual report, where we share a number of key indicators that [we] will be measuring and reporting on every year.

We view communication on sustainability as an ongoing opportunity, both at a portfolio and at a firm level, and it’s something that we’ll continue to share updates on with clients as we go.

AC: Jane, thank you. We’ll be looking forward to joining you to talk about those updates as the months go by. Thank you very much for joining me today.

JA: Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure to be here.

AC: That’s it for this week’s episode of Talking Heads. If you’d like to learn more about our Global Sustainability Strategy, please reach out to your BNP Paribas Asset Management contact or check out Viewpoint, our website for investment insights, at viewpoint.bnpparibas-am.com. Viewpoint brings you commentary and analysis in a variety of formats, from investment outlooks to asset allocation videos and podcasts to help investors make better informed decisions.

You’ve been listening to the BNP Paribas Asset Management Talking Heads podcast with me, Andy Craig and Jane Ambachtsheer, Chief Sustainability Officer at BNP Paribas Asset Management.

Please do join us again next time. Until then, take care.