Diverse Income Trust | ESG

The primary objective of the Diverse Income Trust is to pay shareholders a good and growing level of dividend income – principally derived from those dividends paid by a portfolio of listed UK companies. The board believes that integrating environmental, social and governance factors ("ESG") into the investment process helps the trust to achieve this objective over the long term. The board receives regular reports on the Manager's stewardship activities, and supports the Manager's emphasis on helping UK quoted companies address the climate change agenda and encouraging them to deliver demonstrably socially useful outcomes.

The Manager of the Diverse Income Trust is Premier Miton Group, and as part of the execution of the Trust's investment strategy, its fund managers follow Premier Miton’s responsible investing policy. Premier Miton defines responsible investing as an approach to investing that includes the consideration of ESG factors alongside financial factors, supported by stewardship activities such as voting and engaging with the management of investee and potential investee companies. As a result, the Manager takes an active approach to voting on company resolutions at Annual General Meetings as well as meeting company management regularly, and integrates Environmental, Governance and Social factors into the investment process. 

Premier Miton uses a variety of ESG information sources including company reporting and direct meetings with management and boards, as well as independent specialist ESG research and data - where it exists - to consider ESG related risks and opportunities in the investment approach. Data sources used include ISS and Ethical Screening. Larger sized companies usually have more extensive ESG policies and disclosure, improving ESG research availability. For the smaller companies in which the Diverse Income Trust invests, the policies and disclosures may be less robust, leading at times to lower ESG scores, but this is not necessarily reflective of higher ESG risk or poor ESG risk management compared to larger companies operating in the same industry. 

Premier Miton has been a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment since January 2020, an organisation which encourages and supports its signatories to incorporate environmental, social, and governance factors into their investment and ownership decisions.

At the start of 2022, Premier Miton also became a signatory to the Financial Reporting Council's UK Stewardship Code. Good stewardship includes the responsible allocation, management and oversight of capital to create long term value for clients, leading to sustainable benefits for the economy, the environment and society. The group is also a member of the Investor Forum, a group of institutional investors that facilitate collaborative engagements on material issues with listed UK companies

In addition Premier Miton is a signatory to Climate Action 100+, an investor-led initiative to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change. As a signatory  Premier Miton has committed to participating in engagements with focus companies that are critical to the net zero carbon transition. The group itself also participated in the carbon disclosure programme for the first time in 2020, submitting a climate change response for Premier Miton Group plc, the aim being to set an internal benchmark for climate change performance.  

Banned weapons exclusion: Premier Miton excludes companies that are involved in Banned Weapons across all Premier Miton funds and utilises third party data to maintain a list of such companies

Whilst Premier Miton does not actively additionally exclude any other companies or sectors for ESG reasons, its active investment approach ensures that in many of the Premier Miton funds and investment trusts the exposure to so called ‘controversial companies’ is often low.