Deutsche Bank Transition toward a sustainable and climate-neutral economy Non-Financial Report 2022 Sustainable finance DWS offers two different types of Article 8 products through applying one of the following two ESG filters: – The “DWS Basic Exclusions” filter represents DWS’s basic approach to incorporating certain exclusions in the investment policy of the relevant fund. Products applying this filter only are excluded from the 2022 ESG AuM number – The “DWS ESG Investment Standard” filter enhances the exclusions in comparison to the “DWS Basic Exclusion” filter and adds an “ESG quality assessment” approach encompassing investments in issuers selected for positive ESG performance relative to industry peers (so-called “Best-In-Class approach”). Products applying this filter are included in the 2022 ESG AuM number ESG Assets under Management (AuM) 1 in € m. Dec 31, 2022 Dec 31, 2021 ESG AuM in Active 81,263 84,129 ESG AuM in Passive 34,193 29,499 ESG AuM in Alternatives 1,552 1,608 Total ESG AuM (according to the DWS ESG Framework) 117,007 115,236 1 Numbers may not add up due to rounding Liquid assets GRI 201-2, FS3, FS11 DWS aims to incorporate ESG information in the Active investment process to improve the assessment of the future expected risk / return of a security. This may include the identification of ESG factors at the sector level or the analysis of potential impacts of ESG risks and opportunities on business models, competitive position and valuation. Furthermore, issuers with insufficient governance quality, poor compliance with international norms or issuers with a high climate change risk may become a focus area of DWS engagement activities. In the context of DWS’s net zero targets, DWS took voting action against companies that did not respond to its attempts to engage where it deemed necessary. DWS also reviewed its own net zero investee list and incorporated high weighted inflation adjusted carbon intensity portfolio contribution as a factor and sent out an initial letter for engagement to the newly identified net zero thematic engagement investees. The DWS ESG Engine is a proprietary tool that produces key output assessments, which form the basis for DWS’ ESG investment strategies and for ESG integration activities. The ESG Engine collects data from various sources including leading commercial ESG vendors. For the asset classes where data is available, the data is standardized and aggregated to yield ESG assessment scores and grades which are used by different functions within DWS. The ESG Engine and Solution team owns both the ESG methodology implementation as well as the process to produce ESG assessments in regular update cycles. Throughout 2022, DWS used five external commercial ESG data providers: MSCI ESG, Morningstar Sustainalytics, ISS ESG, S&P TruCost, ESG Book and onboarded additional – partly non-commercial – vendors to support its net zero ambitions. The data is made available to research analysts and portfolio managers for liquid assets through the Aladdin platform and provides support to research, investment decision making and for managing ESG strategies. The use of the ESG Engine and the scope of application remained unchanged throughout 2022. The internal DWS Sustainability Assessment Validation Council was established at the end of 2021 to oversee ESG assessments within the ESG Engine. The council seeks to ensure that the ESG Engine assessments reflects the current underlying risk of the issuer. In 2022, there were 198 reviews including 120 downgrades and 28 upgrades. For assets managed by DWS Investment GmbH, DWS International GmbH and DWS Investment S.A., a regional Engagement Council oversees the engagement activities defined by the enhanced engagement framework, such as providing guidance to the engagement leads, performing quality checks and tracking engagement progress. The objective of this council is to facilitate the discussion of important financial and non-financial issues and to drive engagement for the assets managed by DWS Investment GmbH, DWS International GmbH and DWS Investment S.A. It is chaired by the DWS Head of Corporate Governance Center and the DWS Head of ESG Integration team. The DWS Engagement Policy and DWS ESG Integration Policy for Active Investment Management have been enhanced to accommodate regulatory requirements under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. Corporate governance engagement themes such as the independence of supervisory boards and remuneration remained as key discussion topics in 2022. For the Corporate Governance and Proxy Voting Policy, please refer here (*). 35