Corporate Sustainability

Reducing Inequalities

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Global

Our employees around the world care deeply about the work of Water for Life, a project to improve access to clean water in a number of countries. Through the installation of bio-sand water filters, which can purify polluted water, rural communities can have the clean water they need when they need it. We have supported the initiative — a partnership between the Singapore International Foundation and the NGO Water for Cambodia — through donations and by arranging for teams of employees to volunteer.

Initially, just a few employees from Singapore and Tokyo volunteered, but as more people heard about the project and expressed a desire to go, we decided it was time for us to standardise our travel policy for volunteer trips across all of our offices. This allowed more of our staff from around the world to help out.

Japan Philanthropy Group

In 2022, the Japan Philanthropy Group was created to give our employees the chance to tackle social issues — such as poverty, inequality, and isolation — through charitable giving.

At our Japan office, employees can sign up for a charity programme that allows them to automatically deduct a specified amount from their monthly paycheque and donate it to certain organisations. These include one that refurbishes and sends children’s wheelchairs to developing countries, another that provides musical education to children with disabilities, one that trains young teachers to help address social issues, and an organisation that operates a facility providing emotional care for cancer patients and their families.

We have also partnered with UNHCR Japan, the local arm of the UN’s refugee agency. In addition to holding fundraising campaigns for the organisation, we have hosted Syrian graduate school students as interns in support of a programme to provide refugees with workplace experience and skills.

New Zealand

The Nikko AM New Zealand office is committed to supporting the fight against modern slavery. In 2021, it created the Freedom Fund, which gives investors the chance to use their dormant capital to help protect people’s lives. All fees and returns from the Freedom Fund are donated to Tearfund, a charity with an end-to-end response to human trafficking that works with partners in five of the world’s poorest nations.

Representatives from Tearfund have given seminars to the New Zealand office on modern slavery and have shown the staff how everyday consumer choices can either contribute to the problem or help to alleviate it.

The office has also sent bottles of wine from 27seconds, a social impact winery, as thank-you gifts to clients and business partners. The winery turns around and gives its profits to an organisation called Hagar, which provides trauma recovery care to survivors of trafficking and abuse in poor countries.

US

The Nikko AM Americas Sustainability Working Group has a heart to support greater equality in the arts. It has partnered with the Classical Theatre of Harlem, which brings the professional theatre experience to low-income areas and promotes greater diversity and inclusion in New York’s performing arts scene. Donations from the staff at the US office have gone towards initiatives such as helping to fund the organisation’s digital production hub.

The group is also committed to helping those in the community who are less fortunate. They have donated food to a local food kitchen, money to the New York Cares Coat Drive, and backpacks filled with school supplies to children living in homeless and domestic violence shelters.

Singapore

Members of the Nikko AM Asia Sustainability Group have a real passion to raise support for people in need in their community, especially women and children who are living in challenging circumstances. They have held fundraisers for a number of NPOs including Daughters of Tomorrow, which offers job training and skills workshops to low-income women; Free Food for All, which prepares meals for the elderly, the disabled, and those going through hard times financially; and Cahaya Community, an organisation that provides social support, mentorship, and educational programmes to children of families in need.

The group has also organised virtual charity runs to support Limitless, an NPO that helps young people struggling with mental health issues. It has held Adopt-a-Lego drives, in partnership with the NPO ReadAble, to sponsor sets of the educational Lego blocks to be given to young children from low-income families.

UK

Nikko AM EMEA has made giving — of time, money, and expertise — part of the office’s culture. It has put in place a payroll giving scheme, which makes charitable giving easier for both staff and the charities they have chosen to give to.

The Nikko AM EMEA Sustainability Group has partnered with Trussel Trust, a UK-based organisation that supports a network of food banks, and staff members have held fundraisers and volunteered for member food banks. They have also taken part in the Virtual Big Fun Run to raise money for the organisation.

The team has donated gifts to the Salvation Army’s Christmas Present Appeal; coats to Wrap Up London, which collects and distributes warm winter coats to charities; and toys for the Cash for Kids appeal in Scotland. Staff members from EMEA offices have also volunteered at a number of organisations, including Vauxhall City Farm, which gives educational and work opportunities to children with special needs, and an NPO that collects surplus food donations and puts them together into day packs of meals and snacks that are delivered to those in need.

 

Environment & Climate

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Global

Since 2018, we have measured our firm’s global carbon footprint annually based on energy consumption and business travel data with the goal of helping us see how we can cut our emissions. In 2021, we went a step further and revamped our Global Environmental Policy. This includes a target to reduce our carbon footprint by 40% per employee by 2030, compared with our 2019 emission levels.

We have also launched a forestation project called The Forest of Nikko AM through an organisation in Europe. At sites in Tanzania and India, a total of more than 10,000 trees have been planted, contributing not only to carbon absorption but also biodiversity.

The sustainability groups at our offices around the world encourage employees to take better care of the environment through their everyday choices. For example, the New Zealand office provides reusable cups at work, the Singapore office has given out reusable bento boxes made from bamboo, the EMEA team has sent out monthly emails with tips on how to live more sustainably.

The groups organise talks from organisations — such as The Sustainability Project in Singapore — to show practical ways staff can reduce waste and become more environmentally conscious. The Singapore office has also adopted a pygmy hippo at the zoo to help raise awareness about the importance of biodiversity.

Some of our offices are coming up with smart ways to save energy. The New Zealand IT team, for instance, compressed data not being used on its servers with a technique called hyper-converged infrastructure. This resulted in a drop in the servers’ power consumption by more than a third.

Japan Environment Group

Members of the Japan Environment Group want to do more to reduce our impact on the environment in both our professional and personal lives. They have organised various events and spearheaded initiatives to galvanise their colleagues into taking action to protect the environment.

The team has promoted the use of water servers to encourage employees to stop using plastic bottles and has distributed reusable bags to our employees as a way to help reduce our reliance on plastic. They also organise seminars with experts from a number of organisations, including the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative and the World Wildlife Fund Japan.