Fidelity International is partnering with sustainable investing financial technology firm Tumelo to give pension fund clients a closer look at how fund managers behave when it comes to stewardship.
The new Stewardship Hub announced April 13 was designed to let pension fund clients of Fidelity, along with their trustees and advisers, see how fund managers approach the companies in which they invest about stewardship issues such as climate risk and diversity, and the impact of their actions on sustainability issues.
Ultimately, the hub will benefit "the thousands of members who look to their pension providers to represent their voices," said Anne-Marie Brennan, Tadworth, England-based platform CIO and head of products for Fidelity International, with $812.8 billion in total assets worldwide, in a news release.
The hub should also help U.K. trustees, who are required to submit annual implementation statements that include ESG statistics and their fund managers' stewardship policies, with the hub serving as a central place for such information, analysis and comparison.
It can also help fiduciaries make sure fund managers are voting and engaging in the best interests of plan participants, the news release said.
Tumelo, based in Bristol, England, was founded in 2017 by then-students at Cambridge University who wanted the university to invest more sustainably. That led them to develop an app that shows pension fund participants and individual investors more about the companies they own and how to engage with them.
Tumelo built the custom Stewardship Hub for Fidelity so its pension fund clients and trustees can drill down through portfolios to the underlying holdings and learn the details of managers' stewardship activities.
The Stewardship Hub will be rolled out in phases to Fidelity's master trust clients, and feedback will be encouraged, Fidelity said.
