Melanie Adams discusses trends shaping the responsible investment landscape, including artificial intelligence, shifts in defense stock perspectives globally but particularly in Europe, U.S. shareholder voting rights protection, climate adaptation acceleration, and human rights considerations. Melanie also highlights the role of active stewardship in enabling meaningful engagement between investment teams and senior management at investee companies on ESG issues year-round.  This podcast includes information related to RBC GAM’s approach to responsible investment. This approach does not apply to certain funds, investment strategies, asset classes, exposures or security types that do not integrate ESG factors, including, but not limited to, money market, buy and maintain, passive, and certain third-party sub-advised funds/strategies or certain currency or derivative instruments. Where our investment teams do integrate ESG factors, the weight given to ESG factors in an investment decision depends on the investment team’s assessment of that ESG factor’s potential impact on the performance of the security and/or the fund. For funds where ESG factors are not part of the investment objective, ESG factors are generally unlikely to drive investment decisions on their own, and, in some cases, may not impact an investment decision at all. RBC GAM has a general approach to active stewardship, proxy voting, and engagement that addresses ESG matters among other matters. References to active stewardship do not apply to certain funds or investment strategies that do not undertake proxy voting and/or engagement activities, including, but not limited to, quantitative investment strategies that do not conduct engagements, passive strategies, and certain third-party sub-advised strategies. RBC GAM does not manage proxy voting for certain third-party sub-advised strategies or separately managed accounts. (Recorded: February 23, 2026)

To view the transcript and disclosure for this podcast, please visit https://www.rbcgam.com/en/ca/insights/podcasts/responsible-investment-five-key-trends-for-2026/detail/?disclaimer=true.

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