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1 March 2024
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Border to Coast Pensions Partnership, one of the largest UK pensions pools, has strengthened its Responsible Investment (RI) policies to develop and further embed ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) into investment management.
The update of all Responsible Investment policies, including voting and climate change policies, is part of Border to Coast’s annual review. This is carried out in conjunction with its 11 Partner Funds which represent over 1 million members, 2,700 employers and have c.£58bn in investments.
Jane Firth, Head of Responsible Investment at Border to Coast, said: “Our strengthened approach to voting and exclusion thresholds demonstrates our commitment to Net Zero.
“As long-term investors, we believe it’s critical that the firms we invest in on behalf of our Partner Funds are appropriately managing the risks of climate change and are adopting robust climate change targets and policies.
“We believe that voting is essential to managing climate risk and an important means of influencing company targets and policies. However, not every climate resolution will be supportable, so it is important to explain our rationale on those occasions we vote against.
“Our new exclusion policy covering coal power generation reflects Border to Coast’s support for a Just Transition, recognising that countries have differing transition timelines and economic dependencies on coal.”
Border to Coast will generally vote in favour of shareholder resolutions that are aligned with the objectives of the Paris climate agreement, taking a ‘comply or explain’ approach, publicly disclosing our rationale if we vote against.
*The overarching goal of the Paris Agreement, adopted at COP21 in 2015, is to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
“As long-term investors, we believe it’s critical that the firms we invest in on behalf of our Partner Funds are appropriately managing the risks of climate change and are adopting robust climate change targets and policies.”
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