The UKRF’s Responsible Investment Policy outlines the guiding principles the Trustee has adopted. One of these principles is collaboration:

Collaborative initiatives can be powerful in effecting positive change.

Sharing experience and expertise leads to greater awareness and understanding across the industry. The scale of assets under management by investors taking part in these initiatives will influence and encourage wider adoption of best practice standards in responsible investment. And the greater the advances we make in these areas, the better the sustainable investment outcomes will be for members over the long term.

Here, we look at some of the ways we partner with other organisations, to make the most of the above benefits. As our policy says, we will choose those initiatives we take part in carefully, to focus on those we believe will achieve the most impact.

We appoint expert advisers and fund managers to take on specialist areas of managing the UKRF assets, making day-to-day investment and engagement decisions and acting on our behalf. EOS in particular takes on a key stewardship role, and you can read more about how they extend our collaboration to the companies we invest in here.

Below we focus on how we interact with the wider industry. We set out just some of the groups, initiatives and campaigns that bring the UKRF together with hundreds of other schemes and investors who share our concerns and ambitions.

Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)

The Principles for Responsible Investment are a great example of this shared ambition. In themselves, the Principles are a set of standards, initially established by investors, rather than a group of organisations. They exist to promote responsible investment and support those who officially take up the standards (PRI ‘signatories’) to bring environmental, social and governance considerations into their investment decisions. Accordingly, the Principles themselves have become the internationally-recognised measure of best practice in this area.

The PRI is truly independent. It encourages investors to use responsible investment to enhance returns and better manage risks, but does not operate for its own profit...

PRI

The PRI also provides a framework for signatories to report their ESG progress. As a result, it has formed a proactive network of more than 5,000 organisations joining forces to endorse the Principles and go on record with their responsible investment activities. The UKRF has been part of this network since 2015.

Paris Aligned Asset Owners (PAAO)

The Paris Aligned Asset Owners (PAAO) commitment was launched in March 2021 by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) as an outcome of the Paris Aligned Investment Initiative. It now involves a global group of 57 asset owners, with over $3.3 trillion in assets.

The commitments made by each of the Paris Aligned Asset Owners include:

• Transitioning investments to achieve net zero portfolio greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, or sooner
• Setting objectives and targets for reducing Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions associated with their portfolios and setting a target for increasing investment in climate solutions
• Where appropriate, investing in long-term carbon removals
• Implementing a stewardship and engagement strategy that is consistent with an objective to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.

Signatories are expected to draw on the Net Zero Investment Framework (NZIF 2.0), which was updated in June 2024. We are using this guidance, and you can read about the UKRF’s own net zero ambition here.