Maryland State Retirement  and Pension System is the latest fund to record an historical performance for the 2021 financial year, returning a best ever 26.7 per cent. Again public and private equities were the star performers with an exceptional 51.85 per cent return in private equity and 44.54 per cent in public equities  But in recognition there might be a bill to pay for those higher returns in the future the fund has lowered its actuarial rate of return.

In what could almost be described as cruel, the ridiculous return of 51.85 per cent in the PE allocation did not beat its benchmark, a peer-group benchmark developed by State Street that returned 53.13 per cent.

Chief investment officer of the $68 billion fund, Andrew Palmer, says the private equity portfolio, which currently has a 17 per cent allocation against a benchmark of 13 per cent, is a very strong portfolio of high quality managers.

“Our philosophy for this asset class if we can put ourselves with the top managers and diversify by strategy and geography we will be strong. And our managers all did well relative to their peers,” he says in an interview with Top1000funds.com.

The real issue for the fund in PE he says is the portfolio had about 10 per cent in venture and the PE benchmark has about 17 per cent.

“My philosophy of investment is a lot of products have negative skew and you’re lucky to get par back. It’s hard to generate a lot of extra return. We look for opportunities where we can get lots of extra return without corresponding lower return and venture offers that potential for very strong returns,” he says. “The venture benchmark was up 67 per cent last year so if you didn’t have enough or bold enough venture then you didn’t do as well.”

Maryland has a target allocation of 13 per cent to private equity but due to the portfolio’s success the allocation keeps increasing.

“You can’t rebalance PE,” Palmer says.

The fund has been building out its venture allocation, with the 10 per cent of PE allocation lifted from 6 per cent a few years ago.

“The challenge is we are a public plan and venture managers are quite secretive and keep information close so there are some challenges with that. We are also large and venture portfolios are often small so it’s hard for us to write enough checks. We have some partners that help us with that and get the right managers, he says. “What is coming in venture is attractive, there is some great stuff coming in consumer tech, business tech, and medical tech.”

The fund works with 45 core managers, and overall have 64 active GP relationships which was the result of a secondaries sale in 2019 that reduced the number of relationships from a high of 94.

“We now work with active managers we have confidence in. That freed up some capital and freed our attention,” Palmer says.

Public equities

The performance of the public equities portfolio is the result of work over the past five years to improve performance.

This included looking at better management of beta exposures and closer management of regional and strategy exposures.

“We were challenged a bit on managing our exposures between regions and different strategies such as small versus large and growth versus value. We didn’t have great systems or the depth of staff to measure that in real time and manage it. So we’ve been working on that,” he says. “We’ve been measuring and managing the beta at the strategy and total plan level so we didn’t have this drag of not having enough exposures.”

Typically the fund has had a growth tilt versus value, and historically a small versus large tilt, but that has been reduced tremendously in the last few years through tactical allocations.

The 36 per cent allocation to equities is split between US equities (16 per cent) and developed international and emerging markets (10 per cent each).

Palmer says the fund only uses active where it can generate excess return which means it has a lot of passive in US equities and is fairly active everywhere else.

It manages a Russell 1000 portfolio inhouse and is contemplating other strategies it can bring inhouse.

“We are hoping to do some active inhouse too,” Palmer says. “It helps us with having more control of assets and a lower cost. But also the skill set to manage assets helps us to be better managers of others.”

In the past year the fund has been slightly over exposed to equities on a tactical basis which has been managed through a mix of managers with different styles as well as a tactical overlay with derivatives to tweak exposures.

“I wanted to have the exposures I wanted to have,” he says.

Manager outperformance

Maryland’s fund managers have performed extraordinarily well, with 13 outperforming the benchmark by more than 4 per cent, six of them outperforming by more than 8 per cent and two outperforming by more than 20 per cent.

Baillie Gifford, one of the fund’s most consistent outperformers, was up almost 95 per cent relative to the benchmark for calendar year 2020.

“We have this mentality where we are looking for managers with the potential to have outsized returns but they have good risk management so there are not big drawdowns,” Palmer says.

In the year to June 30, Palmer says the contribution to excess return came equal parts from stocks and bonds in public markets.

In equities it was the stock selection from managers, and on the bond side it was how the team allocated between different risks, specifically it was overweight spread products and underweight long treasuries with each position contributing about 100 bps in return to the total plan.

Palmers says it is an example of how the fund manages the risks of the plan, which is to try to find places where the distribution of returns is skewed in one way or the other and then maximise or minimise the exposures.

“You can see that in private credit and real estate too. We have been moving to upgrade our risk posture. The private credit portfolio had moved from high yield to a BB/B benchmark. In real estate we allowed our value added and opportunistic private real estate portfolios to mature and give back capital and become more of a core portfolio. We have spent a lot of time putting money into the market.”

In the past year the fund has added $1 billion in real estate commitments to pivot to more risky assets.

Lower return target

But despite the stellar performance for the past financial year, the fund recently reduced its actuarial rate of return, moving from 7.4 to 6.8 per cent for fiscal 2023.

“The large return we had last year pulled returns forward, all the asset classes have lower expectations today than they did a year ago and the change in the actuarial rate reflects that,” Palmer says.

Palmer likens to the situation to the year 2000 when most US public funds were fully funded with big returns achieved during the tech run.

“At the time the actuaries are saying you are too well funded so you have to increase benefits, stop making contributions or lower your assumed rate. It’s the same sort of environment. We’ve had abnormal returns and the right answer was to lower the assumed rate. Those that did in the past are among the better funded funds today. It’s recognition that there might be a bill to pay for those higher returns in the future.”

The fund is undertaking an asset allocation study with its consultant, Meketa, where it is specifically looking at a number of topics including lower interest rates and whether bonds still have the diversifying properties they had before; whether to use leverage; and whether the impact of climate change changes the mix of assets.

“I think a focus on inflation-protected assets and assets that get a lot of return from income might be where we go, it reduces the reliance on bonds.”

A new set of responsible investing indexes, developed by APG and Qontigo, allow investors to measure and report on the impact on risk and return of individual ESG criteria.

There is a set of five customized indexes – iSTOXX APG World-X Index, iSTOXX APG World Responsible Index, iSTOXX APG World Responsible Low-Carbon Index, iSTOXX APG World Responsible SDI Index and iSTOXX APG World Responsible Low-Carbon SDI Index.

The iSTOXX APG World Responsible Low-Carbon SDI Index will be used for a Sustainable Development Investments (SDI) developed markets mandate managed by APG in collaboration with BlackRock, with an initial investment of approximately EUR 1 billion.

The indices were built using APG’s data sets, including one derived from the Sustainable Development Investments Asset Owner Platform (SDI AOP) representing investors managing over EUR 1.1 trillion including PGGM, British Columbia Investment Management and AustralianSuper.

The platform uses the definitions and taxonomy defined by the asset owners, which feeds into Entis, the technology platform, which turns those rules and methodology into classifications for 8,000 companies. The standard in the underlying data gets distributed by Qontigo and is available for asset owners to use, like other data services.

Founded in 2019, this platform is open to any institutional investor globally and aims to help accelerate investment aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by providing common definitions, taxonomy and high-quality data sources. It is the first time that the SDI AOP data are used to build investable indices.

The indices will initially be used for an SDI mandate managed by APG for two existing APG clients who aim to double their investments in the SDGs by 2025.
Core to the objective is the SDI and Carbon Reduction Pathway – APG’s plan to reduce the carbon footprint of its investments and to align with its 2025 sustainable investment targets.

The APG Fund for Joint Account is based on the iSTOXX APG World Responsible Low-Carbon SDI Index and the investment portfolio is managed by BlackRock on a day-to-day basis. In addition to these indices, investors have complete flexibility to opt for a tailor-made index that aligns with their own responsible investment strategy

Managing director at APG Asset Management, Ronald van Dijk, says the new responsible SDI indices reflect the goal of contributing to a global standard for investing in SDGs.

 

Swedish buffer fund, AP2, has incorporated Paris-aligned rules into its benchmark construction for global and emerging market equities. This year it turns its attention to Swedish and Chinese equities. The moves come on the back of the best-ever half year return for the SEK421.2 billion fund and its lowest ever costs.

AP2 is one of the originals, a long-time ESG investor that has sustainability at its core.

It started to divest from fossil fuel exposed companies in 2014 with a rationale they were not appropriately priced, due to policy risks not adequately considered when valuing firms.

“We would go through our exposures using our metrics for which companies have the largest mispricing, and so where we would take the biggest financial climate risks, and we would divest from them. So we have been slowly lowering our carbon footprint over time,” CIO Hans Fahlin told Top1000funds.com in an interview.

Last year this proprietary methodology was switched over to the EU Paris-Aligned Benchmark (PAB) which resulted in about 250 divestments due to income from coal, oil or gas.

“Our own methodology was open to challenges, with some parties questioning why we were doing it a particular way,” Says Fahlin. “With the emergence of Paris-aligned benchmarks it was very attractive because it’s a credible third party deciding how portfolios should take it into the account. It’s scientifically-based and provides a glide path to net zero.”

Applying the EU rules to the construction for the fund’s proprietary smart factor indexes was a big endeavour on the data front. But the result is the fund has effectively exited the energy sector.

“Our view is that policy is coming or is already there. The carbon price now in Europe is quite high, higher than it used to be. Firms with high carbon-emissions need to do a lot to change. To the extent that is fully priced, I don’t think it is,” he says. “In the long run we will be investing in low emission companies and they will do better in the future.”

The global credit portfolio, which makes up 11 per cent of the fund, is also Paris-aligned, and also has a smart beta index.

AP2 has been an active member of the green bond market, participating in the first ever green bond, issued by the World Bank.

Also on the sustainability side, AP2 is one of the few investors in the world to publish a second report on human rights in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles’ Reporting Framework.

The report describes its method of identifying companies involved in human rights controversies which the fund then engages with. Ultimately they may be excluded from the portfolio and this year it resulted in a number of countries excluded from the emerging-market bond index.

AP2 has an astonishing low MER of 0.11 per cent

The Swedish fund’s mandate is to maximise the benefit to the pension system and also operate in an exemplary manner.

“This is well aligned with that,” Fahlin says.

This year the fund is working through the Swedish equities portfolio, but there is almost no energy companies in the index and Swedish firms are very aware of emissions issue so the portfolio had a low footprint from the start.

At end of the year it will look at Chinese A Shares, where it has invested since 2013 and has a 2.5 per cent allocation, with the goal of a 2022 Paris alignment.

“We have exited the energy sector in China already. But we want to be a bit more granular because we don’t want firms that are doing the right thing to be divested. So we need more data and to setup processes to verify data.”

Sustainable infrastructure

In the past year AP2 has invested in infrastructure for the first time. Fahlin says the team has looked at the asset class a number of times over the past decade and in the past decided the investment thesis doesn’t hold for it purposes.

“What we see when we look at the asset class in general you either have to take more risk or you don’t get a lot above fixed income,” he says.

However when the focus of sustainability came into play the asset class looks more attractive.

“On the sustainability side the story is a bit different because we have this huge transition that needs to happen and we expect a lot of demand for capital in the area,” he says.

So the fund has made a specific allocation of 2 per cent to sustainable infrastructure and in the last year has invested about 0.5 per cent.

“Our thinking is we will contribute to the decarbonisation while making good returns for the pension system, it’s a win/win and we see lots of good opportunities here.”

AP2 has invested in renewable energy like wind farms and solar, with Fahlin citing the investment in San-Francisco based Generate as an example of the interesting opportunities.

It acts as an intermediary between clients that want to have a renewable power source and the firms that produce the energy generating equipment.

“It means the user of the equipment doesn’t need to buy the equipment, they buy the stream of future energy delivery,” he says.

The fund has also created a joint venture with other AP funds and invested in a Swedish-based initiative to create a big European battery producer.

“Producing batteries is very energy intensive, we are going to use renewable energy to produce the batteries. It’s quite an opportunity and we have a huge factory being built in the north of Sweden.”

 High returns, low cost

For the first half of 2021, AP2 returned 10.2 per cent which was the best ever half-year result for the fund.

Like many investors, private equity was the main contributor with a 39.7 per cent return.

The fund’s Swedish and global equity portfolios in developed countries achieved returns of 22.3 per cent and 17.2 per cent.

AP2 has an astonishing low MER of 0.11 per cent, down from 0.14 per cent the year before.

Assets are largely managed inhouse, with the exception of illiquid assets where the majority is with external managers. All of the Chinese equities exposure is also external.

“Swedish citizens have the right to demand we do what we do in a very efficient manner, and we are very cost conscious,” he says.

Looking forward, Fahlin says the asset allocation – and the modelling of the interaction between the economy, pension system and asset returns – is a continuous process.

“I think if you asked me the most probably future change I would say sustainable infrastructure will increase in its allocation,” he says.

The fund is also slowing increasing its private equity exposure which currently sits at 6.5 per cent.

This was capped at 5 per cent via legislation until 18 months ago when the new restrictions constrained allocations to less than 40 per cent in illiquid assets.

 

 

Marisa Hall argues that incorporating purpose and culture into business strategy makes an organisation more sustainable and resilient, and also equips it to deal with the complex challenges of climate change.

It is received wisdom that an organisations’ greatest asset is its people, but it is less well understood how this asset can be applied to addressing our industry’s greatest challenge: sustainability and particularly climate change. But this is changing as investment leaders, particularly in asset management, increasingly recognise the transformational role a strong culture can play in executing business strategies that have ambitious climate-related targets embedded, notably those with net-zero ambitions.

As a result, investment organisations are setting their business strategies with greater reference to cultures that are highly principled and have higher levels of personal responsibility. At the same time recognising that green business strategies, set in isolation, will not work if the organisational culture does not support or motivate their implementation.

But this shift is not easy and doesn’t come naturally. An organisation’s cultural journey is typically one of self-discovery, which can be uncomfortable at times, but if done well is effective at identifying weaknesses, which would undermine the best-laid strategies, and allow strengths to be reinforced. Some of the typical weaknesses are a culture that shies away from innovation; this often results in people, and their skill sets, becoming siloed and ineffectively used.

As a consequence, opportunities for breakthroughs and the transfer of learning and skills are missed and organisational inertia is perpetuated.

Also, data and other knowledge sources are left unharnessed, meaning solutions fall short and are not as informed as they should be.

Other areas of development, that have shown up in our power of culture research, are the under-appreciated cultural edges that can truly differentiate organisations, such as thoughtful diversity, equity and inclusion strategies, having openness and transparency as norms and having a clearly articulated purpose that unlocks a multi-stakeholder organisational mindset. The latter has already become more important in influencing investment organisations’ climate-change strategies.

But what exactly is organisational culture and can you measure it?

While there are many definitions, we have come to see it as the collective influence of shared values and beliefs on an organisation and how it thinks and behaves, which is influenced by leadership actions at all levels in the organisation.

Culture can determine how a group collectively understands a problem, how they work together to create solutions, and respond to change over time. Which is precisely why a strong and clearly narrated culture is probably the most effective organisational tool for leadership to rely on when attempting to soak sustainability through every aspect of the company. And yes, it can and absolutely should be measured, on the basis that measurement gives a subject respect and management without measurement is weak.

Back to the centrality of purpose and the imperative for it to reflect an organisation’s culture. This is based on the simple premise that when a mission is clearly defined, the type of approach and tone of response is set.

Added to which is how culture and purpose can be mutually reinforcing whereby the establishment of a strong people and teamwork ethos not only underpins an organisation’s purpose but also promotes collective responsibility for it and belonging to it. Another cultural attribute that purposeful organisations will aspire to is transparency, which opens up opportunities for learning from stakeholders, while helping to align saying and doing.

A focus on transparency naturally leads to an emphasis on integrity and authenticity, which when coupled with high ethical standards builds trust and avoids the temptation to overclaim or greenwash.

As an aside the whole area of climate change is awash with organisations using it to gain a competitive advantage. It is our contention that organisations that truly understand this area, in all its complexity, will develop a humbler culture and be reflected in their reporting.

This is not to diminish the link between strong culture and competitive edge. Indeed our research points to a strong emphasis on culture, when synchronised with purpose, being a prerequisite for organisational success.

With many investment organisations acknowledging its key role in enhancing differentiation, especially around sustainability and resilience. we have identified several structural blockages preventing progress toward true sustainability, specifically:

  • Skills gaps. With long time horizons, uncertainties, and inherent interconnectivity, any effective response to the climate change challenge will require multiple insights. Therefore, building teams that are capable of delivering exceptional results – or super teams – has become more critical than ever. Led to success through combining diverse and exceptional talent, these teams’ collective intelligence is fully leveraged by great culture and governance. This collaborative culture may require staff to gain new skills, or have dormant skills put to work.
  • Just as sourcing skills is important for addressing climate change, so is collaboration, both between and within organisations. Many organisations admit to operating in silos across regions which stifles innovation and prevents a more joined-up, holistic, and teamwork-oriented approach to sustainability. Progressive boards are therefore looking for how collaboration can produce better outcomes and reduce gaps in their thinking and how a culture of teamwork and transparency can identify the correct problems and facilitate spaces for collaboration. At a systems level, large asset owners – such as the Government Pension Investment Fund of Japan – are increasingly looking to build strategic partnerships with organisations that share their culture, so as to collaborate better across the industry.
  • Investors are increasingly paying more attention to the types of incentives they offer. If structured appropriately, incentives can increase firm value, refocus efforts away from short-term targets, and create better accountability on performance too. Similarly, we are seeing how investors are setting out clear expectations using stewardship policies, with these expectations becoming increasingly specific in regard to climate-change action. In addition, organisations with effective cultures will more easily identify and put in place the right incentives to motivate and sustain such action.

In conclusion, it seems fitting to return to purpose. Investment leaders are being truly challenged by inexorable forces to become more sustainable and impactful. They are having to incorporate sustainability into their existing capabilities and collaborate to build strategic partnerships to fill gaps. All the while having to set the tone for a workforce which is increasingly drawn to greater social responsibility.

It is our contention therefore that organisations with well-considered and well-articulated purposes, which act as a catalyst for a strong and well-maintained culture, are much more likely to be the truly sustainable investment organisations of tomorrow.

So it is time for more investment leaders to recognise that incorporating purpose and culture into business strategy not only makes their organisation more sustainable and resilient, but also equips it to deal with the complex challenges of climate change. And what’s more, in doing so together, they will provide the collective action required to solve our generation’s greatest commons problem.

Marisa Hall is the co-head of the Thinking Ahead Group, an independent research team at Willis Towers Watson and executive to the Thinking Ahead Institute.

 

 

The $15 billion fund for Korean public officials, POBA, has reached new heights including a diversified, resilient portfolio, full funding and a stellar return due to a global alternatives program. Amanda White spoke to CIO Dong Hun Jang.

In the five years that Dong Hun Jang has been chief investment officer of POBA, the fund for Korean public officials, the funding ratio has increased from 86.9 to 106 per cent.

It’s a more important figure than AUM or return, according to Jang, and really demonstrates how POBA has performed the last five years.

“Our members are very proud, they serve the whole society and the region. Their compensation level is not good enough to prepare for retirement and previously they have been very worried about their retirement life,” he says. “Now they are confident their retirement can be much better than they expected it. That is the really big achievement for us at the fund.”

Due to a mandated tenure of two three-year terms, Jang will step down as CIO in January after six years in a job he says has been the most valuable experience of a 33-year career that included asset management and regulatory roles.

“In this job you have a chance to have a real impact on many peoples’ lives,” he says. “We have around 330,000 members and including their families around one million people are impacted. I’m proud of that.”

In addition to lifting the funding ratio well above 100 per cent, a related measure of success is the stellar performance of the fund during Jang’s tenure, punctuated by a particularly good first six months of this year.

The fund’s asset allocation is distinguished by a huge allocation to private markets – around 58 per cent currently with that likely to increase this year.

Some of the recent value creation highlights include the sale of real estate in Pangyo, Korea’s Silicon Valley, where the fund has been active for the past 10 years.

The team has been frantically allocating capital and in the past six months has allocated at twice the normal rate. This is due largely to the difficulty the fund had in deploying capital in the midst of COVID last year.

“It was the most extreme situation under COVID last year and I didn’t expect the COVID situation to be so prolonged,” he says. “We expect some capital calls from GPs on an annual basis but last year they called much less than we had expected because there weren’t many transactions by GPs, so we couldn’t deploy as much capital as we would have liked.”

Instead the fund used listed equivalents – in real estate and infrastructure – which proved to be quite fruitful.

“We invested in REITs and listed infrastructure to deploy our capital and try to overcome an unusual situation,” Jang says.

While POBA’s focus remains on private markets the public market investments performed well, especially the $360 million allocated to REITs.

“The listed options have performed well for us, especially REITS which was one of the main contributors to this year first half returns. We noticed about $60 million capital appreciation from REITs this year.”

Jang says the ability to make quick decisions and deploy capital quickly was one of the advantages of REITs especially in niche areas.

“In some niche real estate areas it is quite challenging to deploy capital in a limited time, so in those areas REITS are quite useful for our portfolio construction. In areas such as data centres and life sciences we partially used REITS to complement our portfolio.”

Despite deploying quite a lot of capital in the past 18 months, POBA’s cash position is still around 10 per cent and more activity is expected. Jang says from a total cashflow perspective POBA enjoys net cashflow on an annual basis of around $500 to 700 million which allows it to be a little bit more aggressive with illiquid investments.

“Last year we should have deployed capital based on our prior schedule but we couldn’t do it. So many of the planned investment transferred from last year to this year. This year we are quite busy deploying our capital and there is still some work to do. This year is quite unique,” Jang says. “In alternatives we are invested with GPs so their activity and transaction activity is very important for us. The call amounts are bigger than a normal year but we are on the right track now.”

 

COVID stress test

Despite the difficulties of the past 18 months one of the benefits, according to Jang, is that the COVID situation was a good stress test for the portfolio.

“Based on our experience we noticed some real estate, infrastructure and private debt were quite resilient under quite a stressful situation,” he says. “During the COVID situation we found that some GPs were reacting very well and some were reacting less well, so we could differentiate each GPs capacity and their portfolio so we could see how resilient our portfolio looked like through this very challenging situation.”

Private debt in particular showed resilience, according to Jang, and the fund will continue to focus on increasing private debt positions across real estate and infrastructure.

Similarly more investments will be made in some real estate sectors including logistics, data centres and life sciences and social infrastructure and renewables like wind farms will be a focus.

The fund started the year with assets of 16.4 trillion won and increased that by 1.5 trillion to 17.9 trillion ($15 billion) surpassing the end of year goal of 17.6 trillion won in just six months.

With a proportionately small allocation to public equities Jang is confident the portfolio will not be impacted by any market turbulence and the expected annual return will not be too effected.

“Please consider POBA is quite a conservative public pension so we are not seeking higher returns compared with others. We really care about downside protection, that is much more important for us,” Jang says. “During my tenure we diversified our portfolio especially in offshore alternatives and they are generating very stable regular cashflow investments and returns, we have a very resilient portfolio now. That’s really a precious achievement for me and POBA.”

World Benchmarking Alliance is developing a series of freely accessible benchmarks that take a systems lens to assessing private sector performance against planetary and societal needs, rather than performance relative to one another, or relative to past performance. Emilie Goodall explains.

Hope or despair? The latest IPCC report has left many of us with mixed feelings, as we face the stark reality of our current global trajectory.

The climate crisis is a system-level issue, with global ramifications that cannot be diversified away. Universal owners have nowhere to hide. Many leading institutional investors, banks and insurers are also exposed in a way that risks creating feedback loops that may far outstrip anything experienced in previous financial crises.

There is no silver bullet; the transition requires many actions, individual and collective, public and private. The recent Finance Climate Action Pathway from the UNFCCC aggregates best practice into hundreds of practical actions financial institutions – by sector – must take, and by when. The report also includes critical recommendations for policy makers and central banks in recognition that ‘there are key elements to economic theory, the practice of financial services and the regulatory framework that encompasses finance, which need to be updated in transitioning finance so it, in turn, can properly finance the transition.’

Financing the transition

Much scrutiny has been on the latter, financing the transition. Specifically, who is financing what. And how they are using their shareholder influence, with, for example, laudable collective investor action on high emitting sectors in recent years. Beyond investor engagement and responsible lending, financial intermediaries influence in many different ways, through advisory functions, underwriting and more. They also influence one another through fiduciary, custodian and other financial functions. This interconnectivity means that all such actions demand scrutiny and action, or the industry reaction risks forever being piecemeal. This holds particularly true for those globally influential financial institutions that dominate the system. We at the World Benchmarking Alliance call these ‘keystone’ actors, building on an analogy from nature.

Transitioning finance

To reorient capital in a lasting way, and at the enormous scale required, we also need to transition finance. Climate is just one of nine planetary boundaries under threat. If we are to live within these planetary boundaries and leave no one behind, significant flows of public and private finance are needed to enable multiple transitions. In the face of science and shifting societal expectations, the industry is under pressure to move away from sustainability as self-defined – one of the reasons ESG rankings and ratings offer such differing results – and towards sustainability as defined by planetary boundaries and internationally recognised human rights and labour standards. The rush of financial institutions signalling net zero intentions marks this paradigm shift underway, as it reflects cross-industry recognition of the impact financial institutions have on people and planet.

Our contribution as the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) to this paradigm shift is a series of freely accessible benchmarks that take a systems lens to assessing private sector performance against planetary and societal needs, rather than performance relative to one another, or relative to past performance. For example, our recent Oil and Gas Benchmark, in partnership with CDP and ADEME, ranked the top 100 keystone oil and gas companies against the IEA’s net zero emissions by 2050 scenario. The stark results demonstrate a system-wide lack of accountability and action. If oil and gas companies exploit the fields already approved for production, those actions alone will consume the global 1.5 degree carbon budget by 2037.

A financial system road map and accountability mechanism

We are now applying this systems lens to keystone actors in the financial system. The recently published Financial System Benchmark draft methodology looks not just at Paris-aligned commitments, but at governance and strategy, respect for biodiversity, and adherence to societal conventions. It builds on best available standards, looking not just at shareholder activities, but at group-wide actions in recognition of financial services’ planetary and societal impact. The resulting benchmark, due 2022, aims to offer a snapshot of the readiness of the financial system for the rapid transitions underway, identifying leaders and laggards amongst the 400 keystone asset owners, asset managers, banks and insurance companies that will be assessed and ranked.

We are in the final phase of an extensive global consultation on the methodology, and invite feedback on the draft methodology until 6 September. The final methodology will be published by end 2021, and offers a roadmap for the transitioning of finance that is just beginning. The resulting benchmark, due in 2022, offers an accountability mechanism that can be used by the 400 being assessed, their clients and suppliers, and regulators and policy makers, to inform further action.

As the IPCC report underlined, the decade of action is actually becoming a much nearer-term window  for change. Transitioning the financial system in order to finance the transition is possible, if we choose to act.

Emilie Goodall is financial system lead at the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA). The WBA is on track to benchmark 2000 globally influential companies across seven systems by end 2023: social, climate and energy, digital inclusion, food and agriculture, urban, nature and finance. Spotlight benchmarks are also freely available on human rights, gender, access to seeds and seafood.