24.10.2024
Today we’ve published our Responsible Investment (RI) report, which highlights how our key stewardship and governance activities contribute towards positive financial, societal and environmental outcomes.
Investing responsibly is at the heart of how we manage our investment portfolio. Acting as a responsible asset owner protects and enhances the value of our investments, and the management of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks and opportunities can add value to our portfolio. Demonstrating excellence in responsible investment is also a key area of focus in our sustainability strategy.
This year, we continued to take practical action to deliver our Responsible Investment strategy. We made strong engagement progress with our Climate Watchlist companies, continued the integration of (ESG) reporting across our internal portfolios, and improved our disclosures by publishing our proxy voting decisions on our website.
We were delighted to be accepted by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) as a signatory to the UK Stewardship Code for the third consecutive year. The UK Stewardship Code sets high stewardship standards for those investing money on behalf of pensioners.
In 2022/23 we created a Climate Watchlist of 87 companies in our portfolio with the purpose to drive greater Net Zero action and disclosure. This year, we made strong progress on engagement with our Climate Watchlist companies and 90 per cent of the companies on our Watchlist reported to disclosure organisation CDP.
In addition, we engaged with 667 companies on specific issues and objectives, and achieved progress on 49 per cent of these objectives.
We served as co-chair and helped to create the UK Asset Owner Council to better represent asset owner interests in sustainability across the financial sector. We were also pleased to co-chair the DWP’s Taskforce for Social Factors, which published its guide on considering social factors in pension scheme investments in early 2024.
“This has very much been a year of engagement for the PPF,” said Barry Kenneth, our Chief Investment Officer. “Seeing the Climate Watchlist develop and progress has been a strong example of how asset owners and their external investment managers can work together to achieve important goals. As the PPF’s Sustainability Strategy evolves, the support and alignment with our external managers will be imperative in achieving our targets.”
Find out more in the full report.
