Legal & General to halve £81bn annuity portfolio’s carbon emissions by 2030

4 December 2020

Legal & General Retirement (LGR) today announces its commitment to reduce the carbon emission intensity of its current £80.7bn annuity book by 18.5% by 2025, and plans to further reduce this to 50% by 2030.

Legal & General is also targeting a net-zero portfolio by 2050 and strongly supports the Paris Agreement aim to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2°C of pre-industrial levels.

This commitment comes as LGR launches its new Environmental, Social Impact and Governance (ESG) policy, the Pension Risk Transfer (PRT) sector’s most comprehensive publicly available document outlining a provider’s approach to ESG. The policy outlines how LGR will continue to ensure the security of policyholders’ benefits in its £80.7bn annuity book through investments that have a positive impact across the UK.

The Government has highlighted the importance of tackling climate change with the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, and has outlined aims for pension schemes to report on the effects of climate change as a financial risk in the Pension Schemes Bill. LGR’s policy is aligned with this thinking and sets out the progress that Legal & General’s Retail and Institutional Retirement divisions have made towards integrating ESG principles into LGR’s annuity portfolio.”

Source: Legal & General