Preserving and growing the wealth of our clients comes with a weight of responsibility, not only as the decisions we make have a direct impact on the lives and personal welfare of our clients, but due to the wider-reaching implications for our other stakeholders.
The overarching objective of our business is to provide long-term value for all of our stakeholders, namely, our clients, our owner, our people and society. This philosophy is genuinely upheld and runs deep in our business, stemming primarily from the long-term approach, history and integrity of the family who own LGT.
Our four stakeholders are inextricably linked and we consider the social and environmental impact of our business as a whole. In our first ever impact report, we highlight some of the initiatives we have developed to ensure that, as far as possible, we protect and improve the world in which we operate. As CEO of LGT Wealth Management and in line with the wishes of our owner, I feel a personal duty to make sure we are not single-minded in our search for financial success, but considerate in the way we operate.
Whilst geo-political machinations are clearly beyond our control, there remains much we can do within our business to help ensure we have a positive impact on wider society. We strongly believe in upholding a high standard of behaviour that aims to mitigate the negative environmental effects of our business and, through a range of social initiatives, creates positive change. We have worked with our people to capture values we believe in and to which we can subscribe. This helps to create a supportive and inclusive culture, allowing a diverse group of individuals to thrive and feel that they belong in a business focused on clients’ interests, as well as offering opportunities to give back more widely.
Furthermore, as a firm operating in the financial sector and investing large sums into companies on behalf of our clients, we have the potential to exert our influence positively. We are increasingly seeing that an investment approach that considers environmental and societal issues provides attractive financial outcomes for our clients. Investing in companies governed in a way that protects themselves against environmental and social risks is often synonymous with the well-run businesses most likely to deliver the best financial returns. There is a further natural alignment with clients’ objectives when we consider that much of the wealth we manage is in fact being preserved and grown for the benefit of future generations - it would be contradictory to invest for the long term in a way that is inherently damaging to our, or their, future.
We have a range of measures in place designed to ensure we do what we can to protect the physical environment. You will read about some of these measures in the coming pages, but central to our approach is aligning our activities with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and working towards the ambitious objective of being a carbon net zero business by 2030.
We are excited about the future and continuing to meet our clients’ objectives in a positive and sustainable way that will add value, in every sense, for future generations.
