Our Materiality Map Progress

Focusing on ethics allows us to meet regulatory requirements, better serve our clients’ needs, and create a secure workplace for employees through: 

• Our commitment to our core values
• Adhering to our code of ethics/conduct
• Providing employee training
• Administering quarterly and annual certifications
• Creating and maintaining written policies
• Fulfilling requirements of providing disclosure documents
• Collecting feedback and reporting

Our people and their intellectual capital are the backbone of our business, and we seek to support them and provide an environment where they can thrive through: 

• Offering low premiums on medical/dental coverage for employees and their families
• Offering adoption assistance and fully paid parental leave
• Providing tuition assistance to aid in professional development
• Matching a portion of employee 401K contributions
• Providing a care provider service to assist families in finding care for child and adult dependents
• Adjusting our fitness benefit to be more flexible and inclusive of a broader array of employees
• Providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) training as a life skill development opportunity

We continue to focus on strengthening our client relationships and providing a more tailored client experience by: 

• Focusing on customizing relationship management outreach and touchpoints based on each relationship’s needs and remote work scenarios, ensuring the communication aligns with the client’s preference in format and cadence
• Regularly including subject matter experts in client meetings
• Creating content with topics that are top-of-mind to our clients
• Prioritizing technological enhancements including our new online portal and cash event tool, which help support a streamlined client experience
• Hosting quarterly webinars to ensure clients stay up to date on market and firm developments.
• Producing quarterly metric driven ESG reporting for our sustainable clients to allow for greater portfolio transparency

We conduct and maintain the following to ensure we keep adapting and evolving: 

• Internal and third-party risk assessments
• Policy reviews and updates
• Routine audits and testing, such as personal trading reviews, sensitive data access reviews, penetration tests, tabletop exercises, and marketing audits
• Ongoing training and education for employees
• Appointed committees that assess and monitor enterprise risks and conflicts Business continuity and disaster recovery plan
• Two geographically diverse office locations
• Two secure off-site data centers offering data and application redundancy

We first integrated ESG considerations into our investment process over ten years ago. Broadening the scope of our research helps us to better understand our investments and our role in business and society. Our progress in the space this year included:

• Implementing a new ESG scoring model for asset-backed securities (ABS), which includes both issuer-specific metrics across ESG categories and a sector-level risk evaluation
• Integrating social risQ data into the frameworks used to evaluate ESG risks for cities, counties, and school districts, providing scalable and repeatable metrics across each sector
• Establishing a corporate escalation policy and engagement strategy to support our commitment to the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative
• Continuing our engagement efforts by holding more than 130 constructive dialogues with bond issuers and external subject matter experts (for more information, please refer to our 2022 ESG Issuer Engagement Report)
• Enhancing our ESG reporting for sustainable tax-efficient portfolios

Giving back to our communities is engrained in our culture and we believe it creates a sense of purpose, values alignment, and teamwork among our employees through: 

• Our effort to donate one percent of grossrevenues to charitable organizations
• Offering employees up to three days of paid volunteer time off
• Matching individual employee donations, which increased in 2022 from $1,500 to $3,000
• Maintaining relationships and providing monetary support to our Ambassador organizations
• Educating the next generation about sustainability topics, including presentations in 2022 at two local colleges from our director of corporate sustainability

We continuously look for ways to operate more efficiently, safely, and in a manner that has the least negative social and environmental impact including: 

• Our official return of employees to our Boston and San Diego offices in March 2022
• Providing consistent updates throughout 2022 to COVID-19 protocols to align with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), state and local guidance
• Prioritizing technological enhancements to increase efficiency
• Reviewing practices that could be more environmentally conscious such as using QR codes to replace printed content for conferences, using tablets to present in meetings, and switching to a sustainable B Corp printing service for remaining printing needs

Disclosures:
TCFD: Strategy B, Risk Management C
GRI: 413-1
TCFD: Strategy B
SASB: FN-AC-410a.1