Part of ensuring we are good stewards of our clients' capital involves monitoring service providers. We use a range of service providers to support our research and stewardship activities. Our providers are listed in Appendix B.

The Business Risk Department owns the firm's Vendor Management Framework and supports the business in overseeing external service providers and suppliers. Each of our providers has a named relationship manager internally responsible for ensuring the provider offers the level of service we require and for carrying out ongoing due diligence, including addressing ad-hoc issues that may arise. MSCI is our primary source of raw ESG data for internal research, mandate compliance and reporting purposes. As our primary provider, we schedule quarterly service calls with MSCI to provide a forum to discuss any queries that arise. We have found the regular cadence of meetings helpful in improving our understanding of supplier developments and quickly resolving any queries that have arisen with the data. We have also enhanced our ESG data quality checking processes, enabling us to investigate discrepancies and raise these with MSCI where necessary. In 2025, we continued to develop our capabilities, enhancing both our analytical tools and our underlying data infrastructure. Working with our investment teams, we automated several manual research processes, improving data timeliness and accuracy while reducing time spent. We also developed new dashboards focused on exposure to controversial issuers by combining third-party data with more thematically focused datasets. As the year progressed, we increasingly leveraged cloud-based data delivery from our data providers. This improved the efficiency of third-party data onboarding and integration, enhancing our ability to support investment research, stewardship activities, and client and regulatory reporting. We are also exploring the use of AI to increase the efficiency of consuming non-standard datasets. We hope that developing this capability will further aid us, particularly in supporting investment research and stewardship activities.

In 2025, we continued to develop our capabilities, enhancing both our analytical tools and our underlying data infrastructure. Working with our investment teams, we automated several manual research processes, improving data timeliness and accuracy while reducing time spent. We also developed new dashboards focused on exposure to controversial issuers by combining third-party data with more thematically focused datasets. As the year progressed, we increasingly leveraged cloud-based data delivery from our data providers. This improved the efficiency of third-party data onboarding and integration, enhancing our ability to support investment research, stewardship activities, and client and regulatory reporting. We are also exploring the use of AI to increase the efficiency of consuming non-standard datasets. We hope that developing this capability will further aid us, particularly in supporting investment research and stewardship activities.