Our Robeco sustainable investing partnership: One year on

We’re celebrating a successful year in our partnership with Robeco, a €240bn+ global asset manager and leader in sustainable investing*.  

The cornerstone of this partnership is the co-development of exclusive ESGtilted developed and emerging market equity indices. These underpin growth funds in our new workplace default proposition, Scottish Widows Lifetime Investment.

Our bespoke ESG-tilted indices are delivering for customers

The Robeco-SW indices incorporate ESG tilts aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, investing in companies that deliver positive realworld impact across environmental, social and governance priorities such as clean and affordable energy, sustainable resource use, food security, education, equality and inclusive institutions.  

They also include climaterelated tilts using carbon metrics, exposure to climate solutions and a forwardlooking assessment of alignment with the Paris Agreement, favouring companies that support the transition to a lowcarbon economy and reducing exposure to those with higher climate risks.  

Robeco’s proprietary methodology optimises the indices to deliver meaningful sustainability uplifts and reduced carbon intensity, all within a controlled tracking error framework. 

We are pleased to see that the combined index – Robeco Scottish Widows Global Equity Sustainability Tilted Index – marginally outperformed its benchmark, MSCI All Companies World Index, within the tracking error budget over the 12 months since launch in December 2024. The SDG tilts were the strongest contributor to that outperformance during that period.

Strengthening our stewardship capabilities - new collaborations for 2026

As we enter our second year of partnership, we’re broadening our collaboration with an important milestone. From the end of Q1 , Robeco will engage with the companies in our tilted indices, applying an ‘engagement overlay’ to support and enhance our stewardship approach. 

Active ownership - engaging with companies and exercising voting rights to influence positive change - is the foundation of our stewardship policy.  

We believe that effective stewardship strengthens governance, supports risk management and helps build more resilient portfolios. Through targeted engagement, investors can mitigate material risks, influence strategic improvements and promote greater transparency, ultimately helping protect and enhance longterm value while advancing a more sustainable economy.

Enhancing our engagement activity

Bringing Robeco’s 20-years of expertise in shareholder engagement into this process reflects our commitment to continually enhancing our stewardship approach and helping customers benefit from bestinclass engagement capabilities.  

Robeco currently engages on behalf of more than £1 trillion of assets within its stewardship programme. Its 18-strong dedicated Active Ownership team, based in Rotterdam, London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Zurich, works closely with the group’s equity, fixed income and sustainability experts who contribute to its engagement approach.  

Robeco engages with approximately 300 companies, on average, annually. The team’s engagement efforts are focused on the most material ESG factors and themes. Robeco undertakes extensive, focused, and in-depth engagements, allowing the team to build long-term relationships with companies and maximise probabilities of positive change.  

Our engagement partnership with Robeco delivers clear benefits: 

• Consistency: A unified engagement narrative across our ESG index holdings, grounded in Robeco’s proprietary research and methodologies 
• Credibility and alignment: Access to Robeco’s industry-leading sustainability research and stewardship activities, recognised by ShareAction in its asset manager rankings*, and closely aligned with Scottish Widows’ priorities and approach
• Depth and transparency: Detailed engagement reporting and near-live dashboards offering insight into stewardship activity and supporting more integrated collaboration with our internal efforts 
• Propositional evolution: Reinforces the continual development of our workplace proposition. 

We value the work our other appointed investment managers and inhouse team already deliver, but as expectations continue to evolve, this new overlay adds an in-depth layer of engagement that strengthens and complements our collective stewardship efforts.

To sum up

We believe our partnership with Robeco brings robust investment performance, strong sustainability integration and enhanced stewardship to our workplace proposition.  

By combining ESGtilted indices with active engagement, we’re strengthening how we manage longterm risks and opportunities on behalf of members.  

As this collaboration continues to evolve, it reinforces our commitment to delivering resilient, forwardlooking investments that support a more sustainable economy while meeting the longterm needs of pension savers.

Sources:

* In 2025, Robeco was ranked first place in the renowned ShareAction responsible investment benchmark assessing 76 of the world’s largest global asset managers: ShareAction | Point of No Returns 2025. Robeco was also named best asset manager for sustainable investing in six markets by Morningstar in 2023.

Further information

Company engagement examples can be found in Robeco’s latest Q4 2025 active ownership report (PDF, 3MB).