Hampshire Pension Fund
What is Hampshire Pension Fund?
Hampshire Pension Fund covers all the local councils in Hampshire, please some other public sector bodies such as universities. Overall responsibility is with the Hampshire Pension Fund Board. You can find out about Board members, dates of meetings, papers to meetings, etc. - at https://democracy.hants.gov.uk/mgCommitteeDetails.aspx?ID=189. The Pension Fund delegates its investment decisions to investment managers
Hampshire Pension Fund has a “Responsible Investment” Subcommittee which meets twice a year. You can find out more about the Subcommittee at https://democracy.hants.gov.uk/mgCommitteeDetails.aspx?ID=714.
The Pension Fund is a signatory of the UK Stewardship Code and the UN Principles of Responsible Investment (PRI).
Why does it matter?
We can influence what the Hampshire Pension Fund does with its money.
On 6 March 2020, the Responsible Investment Subcommittee approved revisions to the Pension Fund Responsible Investment Policy. You can see it at https://democracy.hants.gov.uk/documents/s45902/2020-03-06%20PFRIS%20policy%20review%20appendix.pdf
The policy says:
The [Board] may also consider disinvestment from a particular stock, the exclusion of a particular type of stock or investment in specific ‘social’ investments where, based on an evaluation of ESG [social, environmental and corporate governance] factors, it believes that the decision would be supported by a significant majority of scheme members and employers; the [Board] may take this approach so long as it does not result in significant financial detriment to the Pension Fund.
“Environmental” is defined in the Policy like this: Environmental - climate change – including physical risk and transition risk, resource depletion, including water, waste and pollution, deforestation.
The policy also says that its investment managers must:
- Challenge – where the underlying investment/company delivers less than a net neutral contribution to a sustainable society
- Neutral – underlying investments/companies that have potential to transform their operations and/or business model to fit in a sustainable future.
- Embrace – where underlying investments/companies are delivering a positive contribution with an undebatable fit in a sustainable future
- Engagement – in all situations the Fund expects its investment managers to engage with companies that they have invested in, as described in more detail below.
Click here to see what organisations are in the Hampshire Pension Fund.