March 2023
29Mar

Why all policies, including pension reform, must consider climate change

“Retrait, climat, même combat,” shouted protesters during the demonstrations taking place across France this past weekend against President Emmanuel Macron’s planned, and much opposed, reform of his country’s pension regime. For these protestors, retirement and climate change are all part of the same problem, the same fight. “No retired people on a burnt planet,” they insisted. The impacts of a warming planet on the world of work are absent from the French government’s plans, yet extreme weather conditions, in particular...

March 29, 2023
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17Mar

Pension Funds and Sustainable Investment: Challenges and Opportunities

By P. Brett Hammond, Raimond Maurer, and Olivia S. Mitchell Pension Funds and Sustainable Investment: Challenges and Opportunities responds to rising global interest in environmental, social, governance (ESG), and impact investing to generate positive impact while generating financial return. Contributors explore the pros and cons of pension ESG investments and discuss case studies from the US and around the world. The findings will interest researchers, management/advisory firms, financial advisors, asset owners, and policymakers Read book here

March 17, 2023
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17Mar

The Importance of Goals-based (and Values-based) Liability Indices: Applied to Impact and Green Investing

By Arun Muralidhar, Roland van den Brink, Patrick Groenendijk & Ronald van der Wouden Investors are creating portfolios that align with their specific goals and values. We posit that goals and values should be translated into Goals-based Liability Indices (“GLIdes”). GLIdes can be used to achieve goals, benchmark the asset portfolio, and improve governance.They allow Boards to measure progress to their overall (or multiple) goal(s) and also the relative risks of their investment policies and implementation. We first introduce the...

March 17, 2023
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02Mar

EU publishes standards to fight greenwashing in green bonds

European Union lawmakers agreed a new standard for companies issuing green bonds in an effort to help fixed-income investors avoid greenwashing. The European Parliament and the Swedish presidency, in its role as representative for EU leaders, agreed requirements for companies that issue green and sustainable bonds as part of their transition to a low-carbon economy. The European Green Bonds Standard will help investors and managers to ensure they are investing in sustainable technologies and businesses, the European Parliament said in a...

March 2, 2023
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February 2023
20Feb

Tech Opportunities In Climate Change And An Aging Population

Tech opportunities in areas like 5-G, cloud computing, healthcare, and finance took up the last posting. This one examines opportunities in meeting two huge issues facing the world’s economies: the growing number of older retirees in populations and the big kahuna of climate change. Seldom do all the answers to these or any other problems lie in technological solutions, but tech certainly will have a role to play and a prominent one. The growing proportion of older people in the population...

February 20, 2023
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January 2023
25Jan

UK pension schemes search out forestry investments

Nest and Cushon, two UK pension schemes with combined assets of more than £26bn, are in a joint search for asset management partners to develop new forestry investment strategies to address climate change pressures. Both pension schemes believe that allocating money to forestry projects will offset environmentally damaging emissions from other investments and deliver attractive returns as the price of carbon rises to reflect the increasing costs of pollution by human activity. The schemes have set aside an initial £600mn for...

January 25, 2023
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December 2022
14Dec

Climate change could cost pension funds billions, EU watchdog says

Pension funds across the European Union would lose billions of euros from their investments in polluting industries without action to mitigate the impact of climate change, the bloc's first stress test of its kind showed on Tuesday. The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) said its test covered 187 pension funds from 18 EU member states with more than 1.98 trillion euros ($2 trillion) of assets, or 65% of assets in defined benefit and defined contribution schemes. The funds were...

December 14, 2022
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13Dec

Vanguard defends strategy as critics pile on after net-zero exit

Vanguard Group is under pressure to reassure stakeholders that it still cares about the climate, after becoming the target of fierce criticism from high-profile environmental advocates including Al Gore. The former U.S. vice president, who now chairs Generation Investment Management, called Vanguard's decision to quit the world's biggest climate-finance alliance "irresponsible and shortsighted." Mr. Gore also suggested the asset manager, which oversees $7.1 trillion in client funds, was out of step with the zeitgeist. It's a sentiment that was echoed by...

December 13, 2022
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08Dec

Global Public Investor 2022

By OMFIF Most central bank reserves managers are resigned to a period of higher inflation and lower returns, according to a report published today by OMFIF. More than 75% of the central banks surveyed for the 2022 edition of Global Public Investor believe inflation will be sustainably higher or more volatile for a prolonged period. Just 20% of reserves managers think inflation will be transitory. At the same time, central banks believe the new macroeconomic environment will cause their portfolios to suffer....

December 8, 2022
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02Dec

Sustainable change needs to happen from the inside out. Here’s why that needs investment

Today, the number of impact-driven startups and scale-ups with noble intentions of improving the planet are plentiful, as are their ideas for clean alternatives to dirty technologies and innovations. But unfortunately, many of these ideas are simply reinventing what already exists, whether it be a product, supply chain or distribution system. Moreover, many are trying to reinvent all those things in parallel. These attempts sometimes fail to consider what competitors are already doing out there and don't take a holistic...

December 2, 2022
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