United Nations Principles for Responsible Banking (Pictet Group 2022 reporting)

The Pictet Group is a partnership of eight owner managers, with principles of succession and transmission of ownership that have remained unchanged since foundation in 1805. It offers only wealth management, asset management and related asset services, which compose the business lines of the entity (Pictet Asset Management, Pictet Wealth Management and Pictet Asset Services). The Group does not engage in investment banking, nor does it extend commercial loans.

With CHF 698 billion in assets under management or custody at 31 December 2021, Pictet is today one of the leading Europe-based independent wealth and asset managers.

Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland and founded there, Pictet today employs more than 5,000 people. It has 30 offices in: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Basel, Brussels, Dubai, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hong Kong, Lausanne, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, Monaco, Montreal, Munich, Nassau, New York, Osaka, Paris, Rome, Shanghai, Singapore, Stuttgart, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Turin, Verona and Zurich.

Pictet Wealth Management has been helping private clients and family offices to build their businesses, protect, grow and control their wealth and preserve it for future generations. With CHF 274 billions in assets under management, Pictet Wealth Management was awarded Pictet Wealth Management was awarded ‘Best Private Bank in Europe’, ‘Best Private Bank in Switzerland’ (for the 10th year running) and ‘Best Global Brand in Private Banking’ by the jury at the Financial Times Group Global Private Banking Awards 2021. It operates in 22 offices across the world.

With the scale of challenges humanity is now facing, we need change at a systemic level. For a more resilient, just and sustainable economy to emerge, each part of the system must understand their role and adapt accordingly. As an investment-led service company, our fiduciary duty has always been to manage the long term savings of our clients, and in doing so to protect and grow their capital. Focusing on this objective and shying away from short term profits is the only way to achieve the dual goal of performing for our clients, while deploying their capital in a way that accelerates the transition towards a more resilient and responsible economy.

In fact, we are convinced that investment leadership will increasingly be contingent on considering real-world impact of investment activities, requiring us to embrace new models based on solid science and innovative partnerships. Across public and private markets, investors must integrate environmental and social outcomes in their decisions, ownership practices and capital allocation.

The Pictet Group has prospered for over two centuries by taking a responsible, long-term approach to business and to the management of our clients’ wealth - considering not only the interests of the present, but also of future generations. This is reflected in our purpose: to protect, grow and transmit wealth, in every sense, by building responsible partnerships with our clients, colleagues, communities and the companies in which we invest. Our purpose is to build responsible partnerships with our clients, colleagues, communities and the companies in which we invest, in order to safeguard and transmit wealth, of all kinds, in the service of the real Economy.

We have three ambitions before 2025:

• To significantly reduce the environmental impact of our activities and investments
• To fully integrate ESG factors and active ownership into all investment processes
• To be a leading provider of responsible products and solutions

To achieve these ambitions, we have identified 10 levers of action for conducting our own activities and for managing assets on behalf of our clients. Those levers were part of our business strategy and have been officially communicated in early 2020. They are our conducting line towards our 2025 ambitions.

1. As we have full control of our balance sheet, in 2020 we eliminated balance sheet exposure to fossil fuel producers and extractors. This means that on these issuers we sold more than CHF250mn of holdings in 2020, discontinued issuance of Pictet structured products, and stopped provision of seed money to relevant strategies.
2. Employee engagement: Our independence has enabled us to pursue a unique approach to recruiting and managing people, strengthening the partnership between employees the company and our community. This includes systematically raising awareness with our employees on sustainability topics and encourage them to be involved in local actions. This takes form through trainings across all lines in 2021 and extending to the rest of the firm in 2022.
3. Direct environmental impacts: target of 60% of reduction of absolute direct GHG emissions (2019-2025). All direct and indirect emissions generated by our value chain have been offset since 2014 and Pictet will continue offsetting these emissions through an impactful approach. We have made a commitment to set 1.5°C-aligned science-based decarbonisation targets and to reach net zero across our operations and our investments by 2050.
4. Philanthropy: the Pictet Group Foundation supports projects that help mitigate pressing challenges for the environment and youth specifically around the themes of water and nutrition.
5. Advocacy and partnerships: beyond adhering to the industry-leading standard established by third parties, Pictet also uses its influence to forge change.
6. Inclusion of ESG into investment process: proprietary processes & tools focus on evaluating ESG Risks and Opportunities for Funds as well as for Corporate and Sovereign issuers.
7. Responsible products and solutions: by broadening our offering in responsible solutions, we bring to the forefront the opportunity to contribute to a positive impact.
8. Active ownership Engaging with investees companies and exercising voting rights.
9. Client disclosure: For selected strategies, we provide in-depth reports on environmental and social impacts.
10. Research and thought-leadership : We will use our substantial experience across key environmental and social themes to publish targeted research and help raise awareness and capital for a sustainable transition.

We are convinced that these 10 levers of action will make us better investors and corporate citizens and help us play our part in designing a thriving system for future generations.

In order to ensure coherence and maximize firm-wide impact, we have an empowered Group Stewardship and Sustainability Board which oversees and tracks Group and Business line alignment and progress against these ambitions and our Responsible Vision. Members of the Board include Business Line and Group key function representatives who have the responsibility to bring key topics, recommendations and decisions from the board into the appropriate respective bodies for execution

Scope

Pictet Wealth Management (the Wealth Management arm of the Pictet Group) invested portfolio consists of 3 buckets: the Discretionary part (where the investment decision is delegated to Pictet Wealth Management), the Advisory part (where the Bank accompanies clients throughout the investment process, but clients keep the final investment decision), and finally the Execution only (where clients make their own investment decisions). 

Pictet Wealth Management has undertaken the impact analysis on its overall assets, keeping in mind that our impact as investors is better manifested through the investment strategies implemented within our discretionary mandates.

We have taken into account the global exposure through corporate issuers (equity and fixed income) and their activity sectors, as defined by ISIC, and used the UNEP FI "Investment Portfolio Impact Analysis Tool”. For those sectors not covered by the tool, a second layer of analysis was performed using our proprietary ESG Scorecard, including information on Green revenues and severe controversies from trusted data providers. 

Please note that we could only assess 70% of our invested portfolio. The remaining portion of the portfolio couldn’t be assessed due to the nature of the investee companies and to the lack of data availability on private assets and specific markets. The present report will serve as a baseline for future reports.

The below analysis does not include the assets managed by other entities of Pictet Group.

Scale of Exposure

Overall:

20% of assets is invested in sectors identified as having a positive impact. The main contributors to the score are, summing a total weight of 12%
- Pharmaceuticals
- Diversified Banks
- Health Care equipment

 21% of assets is invested in sectors having both positive & negative impact. The main contributors, summing a total weight of 12% are:
- Packaged Foods and Meats
- Interactive Media & Services
- Automobile Manufacturers

 28% of assets is invested in activities/sectors having a negative impact on society. The main contributors to this weight are:
- Integrated Oil & Gas
- Systems Software
- Application Software

Context & Relevance

When focusing on the negative impact, it’s important to highlight that the majority of the companies associated to negative impact are owned in execution only portfolios, and not in discretionary mandates. The percentage of companies associated with a negative impact in our discretionary mandates is only 17.5% (compared to the 28% overall).

In parallel, when looking at companies associated to positive impact, the percentage in our discretionary mandates is 26.2% (compared to the 20% overall).

Scale of Intensity / Salience of Impact

One of the reason behind the lower % of companies associated to negative impact, and the higher % of companies associated to positive impact in our discretionary mandates is linked to the fact that discretionary portfolios follow internal policies and framework with particular attention to high risk activities.

Beyond risk avoidance, we also engage with investees companies and exercise voting rights.

Our engagement strategy focuses on: 

4 thematic pillars, paramount for our Responsible Vision:
- Climate
- Water
- Nutrition
- Long-termism

Companies with revenues from high risk activities (beyond a defined threshold), or being involved in severe controversies

These pillars represent our priorities in our journey towards responsible investing.

For the first time this year, Pictet Wealth Management undertook the Portfolio impact analysis using the Tool approved and released by UNEP FI. It confirmed our internal analysis, and will serve as baseline for the upcoming years.

Most of our potential negative impact comes from investing in European & American companies active in the production and extraction of Oil & Gas. To address this exposure, our current actions are as follows:

Awareness
- The current global warming and the challenge of climate change are complex problems that need the interaction of all stakeholders, from government to corporates, to financial institutions and consumers.
- It’s key for both us and our clients, as investors, to fully understand the entity of the issue and the potential solutions. As such we are communicating internally and externally about the topic of climate change through publications that support both awareness and positive impact opportunities (eg Net zero transition leaders white paper).

 Engagements
- As active owners, we engage and vote in the companies we invest in.
- Our engagement strategy focuses on: 4 thematic pillars (Climate, Water, Nutrition, Long term vision) and on companies with revenues from high risk activities (beyond a defined threshold), or being involved in  severe controversies.
- Specifically, when referring to Oil&Gas companies, the engagement asks will be aligned with our overall climate action plan and include topics like:
   > Transparency on GHG Emissions scope 1, 2, 3 
   > Commitment to Net Zero
   > Expansion and exploration strategy
   > Phase-out strategy
- Resources across the group are in place to monitor the engagement activities and take further action if needed.

Exclusions
- Our Responsible Investing Policy identifies activities for which an exclusion policy is in place, either for all assets (eg Controversial Weapons and Thermal Coal Extraction), or for our Responsible Investing solutions (eg GMOs, Pesticides, Oil&Gas Production).
Responsible Investing Policy

In general, as mentioned previously, the first of Pictet’s ambitions by 2025 is “To significantly reduce the environmental impact of our activities and investments”:

The steps we have taken have led to a reduction of CO2 emissions per employee of 73% since 2007, well above the 40% target we had set for 2020. We have been offsetting emissions that we cannot avoid since 2014, and have set a new absolute reduction target of 60% by 2025 versus 2019. You can find more information on our Environmental stewardship page.

Balance Sheet

- In February 2020, we announced the decision to eliminate the balance sheet exposure of the Pictet Group to fossil fuel producers and extractors (oil and gas, and thermal coal). Since the end of 2020 our balance sheet is effectively fossil fuel free. This was achieved by selling treasury positions in oil and gas producers amounting to more than CHF 250 million.
- We also no longer use our balance sheet to seed investment strategies with fossil fuel producers and extractors and have never offered commercial loans to such organisations.

Actively Managed strategies
- Since 2014, the Pictet Group has enforced a strict exclusion policy on  companies involved in controversial weapons for all its actively managed strategies and no investment recommendation is done on this topic.
- We also exclude companies that generate significant revenue (>25%) from  thermal coal mining from all actively managed assets. This sector has a limited ability to decarbonise and is at high risk of becoming a stranded asset.

Finally, we have made a commitment to set 1.5°C-aligned science-based decarbonisation targets and to reach net zero across our operations AND our investments by 2050.

We believe those actions will decrease our overall exposure to negative impact sectors in the next 18-24 months.

In parallel, we also want to offer investment solutions that catalyse a positive impact in society and on the environment, by supporting companies that provide innovative solutions and those that are in transition. As such, we are in the process of identifying more granular positive impact metrics that will be key to identify and monitor those investments in companies having such a positive impact.

Plan target implementation & Monitoring

Progress on implementing targets

Our financial and legal independence underpins our stability and our freedom of spirit and action. It ensures objectivity in our client relationships and prevents conflicts of interest. It gives conviction and tenacity to our entrepreneurial drive and our long-term vision. Excellence leads us to aim for the highest standards of service so that we can, with our own perspective, add real value for our clients. It supports our desire to achieve consistent investment performance that meets the objectives of our clients. It inspires us to innovate, free from the dictates of fashion. It means being an employer of choice, able to attract, develop and retain employees of talent.

Responsibility is one of the 5 guiding principles at the Pictet Group. We believe responsibility goes hand-in-hand with a long-term, partnership approach. It means having a sense of responsibility and integrity not only towards the present generation but also to future generations — and to the real economy and the wider world.

The Group’s Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct sets out the principles and standards which should characterize all the Pictet Group’s business activities and all our dealings with our stakeholders, clients, colleagues, regulators, business partners, suppliers, vendors and communities. We as a firm conduct our business with integrity, honesty, loyalty, due skill, care and diligence. We place the legitimate interests of our clients first at all times and treat clients fairly. All colleagues have access to the Code and are regularly trained on its implication when dealing with our clients and other stakeholders. Those Guiding principles actioned by employees result in long term partnerships between the Bank, its clients and business partners.

The ESG dedicated team has the responsibility to foster awareness on Responsible Investing topics across the institution. To do so, a training program has been defined in order to provide information and tools to the Bank’s employees. By end of 2021, 1,500 colleagues have received a dedicated ESG/Responsible Investing training across the Group. Moreover all information in relation to Responsible Investing is internally accessible and is promoted via dedication communications. It is planned to conducted an additional rounds of trainings during the course of 2022, emphasizing on upcoming regulations covering the Responsible investing space. 

Our Group Responsible vision articulates our ambitions with a focus on how we manage our client assets - where we can contribute most to the transition to a sustainable economic system and mitigating negative externalities.

In order to support our clients’ awareness in the journey towards responsible investing we are working across three pillars:

Awareness through Investment Solutions

Awareness through Extra-Financial Reporting

Awareness through Communication 

Investment Solutions

Our ambition is for all the investment solutions available to our clients to integrate ESG considerations in the investment process. We have reached 70% of assets under management at the end of 2020 and are therefore on track to reach our ambition to have 100% ESG integration before our initial 2025 target. By including E, S and G considerations in our investment process, we create awareness about those characteristics and their financial materiality, initiating important conversations with clients. We also continue to boost our product shelf in responsible products and solutions.. As of end of 2021, around 10% of the assets managed for our clients were classified as responsible (art.8 or art.9 according to the SFDR directive), and we foresee to reach 30% by 2025.

The broadening of the shelf is planned both with launching new dedicated responsible solutions, and with transforming existing solutions into responsible, when we believe the convergence is possible, given the availability of both data and products in the needed asset classes (regions, styles).

Extra Financial reporting

The Extra Financial reporting is automatically integrated in the Investment Management Report to clients’ invested in Responsible solutions. It goes beyond the traditional (financial) reporting and provides an overview of the portfolio’s exposure to Environmental, Social & Governmental (ESG) characteristics such as ESG Risk Rating, Corporate Governance, ESG Controversies, exposure to High Risk activities and Carbon intensity. It includes quantitative analysis run through our proprietary ESG Scorecard. Each individual company within the portfolio and benchmark is rated. These ratings are then aggregated based on their respective weights. Missing data from providers are reported to clients to provide an accurate view on their portfolios.

The Extra-Financial reporting is also available, upon clients’ request, for those clients who don’t follow a responsible investing strategy as defined by our policy.

We aim to enrich the Extra Financial reporting with additional metrics, notably on the engagement & voting activities, and on positive/negative impact metrics.

Communication

In order to support our clients awareness in the journey, we are investing in internal and external communication.

We have developed a Responsible Investing Awareness training that is now mandatory for all our employees, enabling meaningful conversations with our clients.We have a dedicated internal Responsible Investing page collecting all the information regarding our frameworks, our solutions, case studies.We are continuously producing interesting external material to create awareness both about Responsible Investing in general and specific themes, like Climate Change or Impact Investing. Additionally, dedicated marketing campaigns rolled out in 2021 in Europe and Asia are continuing in 2022, reinforced with dedicated clients’ events in person and virtually.

Throughout the organization we have also designated Responsible Investing ambassadors ensuring the continuous flow of information around projects, and allowing one voice when it comes to sustainability and responsible investing.

As investors, besides our clients, our engagement with the companies in which we invest is an important lever of action. This is why we work through investor groups to implement our vision, and the Principles.

The Pictet Group is actively involved in a number of collaborative engagement initiatives, each of them addressing a specific theme, where external support allows for the further advancement of society’s goals. Partner organisations leading the respective engagement agendas, allow us to benefit from their unique expertise on specific issues and themes. Collaborative engagement initiatives allow us to join unified groups of investors, willing to aggregate their voices for a greater impact on specific causes.

In 2022, we are active signatories of the following initiatives: Climate Action 100+, Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change, Access to Nutrition Initiative, Ceres, and FAIRR Initiative.

In addition, as active member in various industry groups and workstreams such as Swiss Sustainable Finance or the Swiss Bankers Association, we aim to engage and collaborate more broadly within our own industry. We collaborated in the drafting of several guidelines and educational pieces over the last year. Moreover being signatories with UN initiatives, we also commit to SBTi and Net Zero Asset manager. initiative. Our advocacy takes form also through our engagement. In 2021, we signed IIGCC Global Investor Statement to Governments, sent engagement letters to key auditors  in the UK to foster inclusion of net zero considerations. Our associative presence also expends to AMAS and SFG. Our advocacy activities will continue and grow through 2022.

Because the problems we face require new partnerships across sectors of the economy and society, we have been very active in the Building Bridges initiative, which aims to drive more capital towards the SDGs through dialogue between the financial centre and the rich international organization ecosystem in Geneva.

Through its philanthropy, the Pictet Group Foundation supports impact driven solutions that build resilient communities and ecosystems with a special focus on Water and Nutrition. By partnering with entrepreneurial social and environmental changemakers, the Foundation seeks to have maximum impact at grassroots, community and policy level. These partnerships vary from global organizations such as the UNICEF  to local NGOs such as Africa Water Solutions.

Every year, Sustainability week at Pictet gathers external speakers and change makers with internal leaders. It is an opportunity to create a space for dialog and foster collaborations. Last edition, regional and global change makers were invited to present partnerships between our institution and theirs such as Sustainable Finance Geneva & World Bicycle Relief.

The Group Stewardship & Sustainability Board (GSSB) is the governing body for Group ESG & Stewardship. It oversees and tracks Group and Business line alignment and progress against our 2025 ambitions and the 10 levers of action outlined in our Responsible Vision which was approved by our Partners in 2020. This includes tracking progress and implementation against our main commitments such as the UNPRB, UNPRI, TCFD and to Net Zero (through NAZAM and SBTi).Members of the Board include Business Line and Group key function representatives who have the responsibility to bring key topics, recommendations and decisions from the board into the appropriate Business Line and Group bodies (EXCOs, EXBOs and IMCOs) for execution. The Business Lines are responsible for defining their ESG strategy (in alignment with the GSSB policies and priorities) and monitoring its execution. Laurent Ramsey, Partner in charge of Sustainability & Responsible Investing chairs the Board. The Head of Group ESG & Stewardship coordinates the Board, and ensures information is brought in a timely manner, and decisions are effectively executed at the business line level. The Group ESG & Stewardship team also has oversight of GSSB sub-committees – including the Group ESG Data Committee and the Corporate Sustainability Advisory Committee.

The GSSB meets 4 times per annum and reports to the board of partners through the Group Head of ESG & Stewardship, at minimum on a quarterly basis, and ad hoc if need be.

Additionally, group entities and locations actively collaborate regarding regulatory projects. The governance on the latter is assured by the ESG Regulatory Working Group led by Group Risk. Representatives of each business division have a seat on the table to ensure implementation and monitoring across the Group.

Moreover, the Wealth Management division takes the lead when addressing clients’ services. Driven by the ESG team, responsibility to implement actions towards our goals are shared among the division and more specifically among the dedicated Investment department. Goal setting for each participant in the workstream is officially communicate through the performance management tool and ensures accountability and commitment.

Our ambition of becoming a leading responsible investment firm is one of Pictet’s seven 2025 strategic priorities and was first presented by our Partners in early 2020 at the bi-annual all-staff company presentation (“Semestrielle”). This ambition has been re-iterated at each subsequent Semestrielle session, underlining its importance and providing visibility of progress towards it.

Furthermore, over the last 6 years we have had an annual Sustainability Week which aims to foster a Group-wide conversation on Sustainability and responsible investing. Several of our Partners and C-suite representatives are involved alongside internal and external experts around key sustainability themes for Pictet and our stakeholders. In 2020 , 609 colleagues participated at least to one conference or workshop aiming to raise awareness and educate around our ambitions and 10 levers of action. The 2020 Sustainability Week also pro-actively invites colleagues to contribute to our transformation through idea generation and/or active involvement in ongoing initiatives.

In order to align incentives, our remuneration policy integrates sustainability risks by way of the policies and procedures which Pictet employees are bound to respect. Compliance with internal (Policies & Procedures) P&Ps form a part of an employee’s annual review, which may include ESG limitations and taking into account sustainability risks based on the type of products or services selected by clients served by that employee. In addition, Pictet employees are held to the Group’s general engagement on sustainability and responsible investing, as relevant to their function.

To support awareness across our front staff about both our Vision and the implementation of it, we have created a network of  Responsible Investing Ambassadors. Their role consists in being the representative of Responsible Investing across Front functions, and keep their colleagues updated on important/interesting evolutions  in the Responsible Investing space. A monthly meeting is held between Ambassadors across locations and the responsible ESG team to provide the tools and information needed to ensure fulfilment of their role. Furthermore, all employees follow a mandatory training program on Responsible Investing since 2021, which will also be part of the onboarding trainings for new joiners. Additional trainings are taken place according to employee’s role in the organisation, and specific initiatives.

We have been on the sustainability journey for many years and adhering to the Principles for Responsible Banking is part of our commitment to transparency, and to advocating sustainability within our industry. The Group has embedded the Principles within the existing governance structure to ensure they are implemented effectively.

Our Pictet Wealth Management ESG team is leading the implementation of the UNPRB together with the Group ESG & Stewardship team, coordinating the efforts with our experts across Group the Business Lines. Supported by the Responsible Vision from Group, Wealth Management division is taking the lead on the portfolio impact analysis and commits to monitor actions towards our common goals. Derived from conclusions on the impact analysis, our plan of actions will support us in implementing the principles for responsible banking and will be monitored on a yearly basis.

Over the last 12 months we have made significant progress on implementing the six Principles for Responsible Banking. We have published a clear vision, ambition and our levers of action. Areas of improvements have been identified and targets for the upcoming years will conduct the progress.

Our governance has been strengthened through the Group Stewardship and Sustainability Board which has helped us drive implementation within the relevant business lines.

Our Group strategy aligns with what the Principles and other relevant international/regional good practices articulate. We are continuously training and animating a group of ambassadors within the organization which help us drive change, especially through client interactions. Large efforts are and will be deployed on training our colleagues and raise awareness, through events, presentations, content creation and dedicated communication.

Beyond our own organization, our work in industry association work-groups such as Swiss Sustainable Finance, the Climate Action 100+ or the IIGCC also aims to foster the transition to a more sustainable and resilient financial system.