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Bâtirente’s Strategy

Our purpose is to get a return on our members’ retirement savings in a transparent, responsible and profitable manner. The long-term financial interests and the general interests of our members are at the very core of our action. This is why we intervene with enterprises in which we invest, so as to help them improve the management of their extrafinancial risks. 

What Are Extrafinancial Risks?

Extrafinancial risks exist when the environmental, social or governance practices of enterprises are likely to hurt their short, mid or long-term results and, as a consequence, their market quotation.

To enhance the financial performance of enterprises in which it is investing, and to encourage them to take advantage of new business opportunities, Bâtirente considers these environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in its analysis, monitoring and voting rights exercising processes.

Entrenched in the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), our strategy is based on shareholder advocacy and on active participation to the main national and international initiatives in this area.  

Shareholder Engagement

Bâtirente analyzes the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performances of enterprises in its portfolios according to its Guidelines on extrafinancial risks management. This is how it identifies the least performing enterprises and presents them proposals meant to mitigate these risks and, when applicable, submits proposals to other shareholders on the occasion of their annual general meetings and conducts campaigns to convince them of their merit.

Bâtirente is thus intervening on issues as diverse as climate change, sustainable logging, biodiversity protection, board member election processes, compensation programs, the defence of Southern-hemisphere workers’ working conditions, native rights, as well as the fight against corruption.

National and International Initiatives

Bâtirente complements its shareholder advocacy with a more global approach that consists in building and strengthening strategic alliances with key financial sector participants. The goal of this approach is to pool the efforts of all organizations to maximize their influence and to gain greater leverage on the financial market. These national and international initiatives take the form of campaigns, associations and memoranda of understanding.

Voting Rights Exercise

Since the fall of 2008, Bâtirente has been delegating the mandate to exercise its voting rights to the Groupe investissement responsable, in compliance with its Guidelines on extrafinancial risks management.

Guidelines and Declaration

In January 2005, Bâtirente adopted its Lignes directrices sur la gestion active des risques sociaux, environnementaux et reliés à la gouvernance d'entreprise (Guidelines on The Active Management of Social, Environmental and Corporate Governance Risks) and its Déclaration sur les principes et les procédures en matière de responsabilité sociale et de gouvernance d'entreprise (Declaration of Principles and Procedures for Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance).