My Future Focus

Our commitment to sustainbility investing, as reflected by Aviva's 30-year track record in this space, and the significant resources that we devote to to this area, runs throughout My Future Focus. We believe that as an investor in businesses all over the world and as a major pension provider, we have a duty to build on our track record as a sustainable investor, and to use our resources and expertise to try to deliver long-term sustainable returns for our customers.

We also believe that as a steward of people’s money, we have a responsibility to act on the issues facing the world today from including climate change and social injustices. That’s why sustainability investing is integrated across My Future Focus.

A dedicated inhouse team of more than 50 sustainable investing analysts are central to the My Future Focus sustainable investing story. Our analysts’ research and insight into environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, which plays a crucial role in the My Future Focus investment team, helping to shape any investment decisions, as well as their targeted voting and engagement work. This research and insight feeds directly into the actively managed funds in My Future Focus. Meanwhile, the regional equity index tracker funds are optimised to have a higher ESG score and a lower carbon intensity reduction pathway than their respective benchmarks, as we believe this could improve long-term risk-adjusted performance.

Our engagement work with businesses and key stakeholders is also key

We focus on engaging with companies and countries we invest in to drive long-term value for our customers. We are active owners and lenders, using our voice to drive change on three themes - People, Climate and Earth - through dedicated engagement programmes. Our corporate engagement routinely takes the form of meetings or calls with the board or senior sustainability executives, as well as collaborative initiatives. We also take a holistic approach to stewardship, engaging players from across the value chain. For example, one of our strategies to help reduce carbon emissions is to engage sector value chains in hard-to-abate sectors, such as transport and heavy-duty chemicals.

We've been holding a series of roundtables to convene some of the world's biggest carbon emitters from across their value chain to share an understanding of the key barriers to decarbonisation and identify how these challenges could be overcome. 

My Future Focus is also aligned with the Aviva baseline exclusions policy. We therefore exclude a specific and limited number of sectors and economic activities where we consider the sustainability risks to the climate, planet and people to be so severe that providing equity and debt funding to such areas is fundamentally misaligned with our sustainability approach.

For instance, the solution does not invest in companies and sectors that generate prescribed levels of revenue from controversial weapons and civilian firearms; those involved in unconventional fossil fuels (arctic oil and oil sands); tobacco producers and distributors; thermal coal.