$8 trillion backs UN's SRI principles

London, 3 May: More than 180 institutional investors, managing assets worth $8 trillion, have signed up to the UN's voluntary principles on socially responsible investment in the last year.

When the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) were launched last April, 20 mainstream institutional investors signed up, representing $2 trillion. On their first anniversary, 183 institutions had promised to apply the principles to their investments.

Donald MacDonald, chair of the PRI and a trustee of British Telecom's pension scheme, said: "We have great buy-in from the investment community and we now have in place the support structures to assist in implementation."

Signatories agree to six principles, including a promise to integrate environmental, social and governance issues into investment analysis and decision making.

Institutions also sign up to become "active owners" of the stocks they invest in, for example by using their shareholder votes, filing resolutions and engaging companies on ESG issues.

Daniel Simard, chief executive of Canadian pension-fund manager Bâtirente, said: "We have an interest to ensure that anything that could potentially derail our long-term investment, such as climate change or reputation risk, is factored into management's decision making."

Else Bos, chief executive of another signatory, PGGM, added: "In cases where ESG factors have a demonstrable impact on the financial performance of our investments, they have to be analysed and taken into account in our investment decisions."

Other PRI supporters include the Government Pension Fund of Thailand, the Government Employees Pension Fund of South Africa and Brazilian investor PREVI, which has encouraged a further 16 Brazilian pension funds to sign up.

Signatories are currently filling in a questionnaire on how they are implementing the principles, which will be published in July. But, in the meantime, Insight Investment, a UK-based asset manager, has already published a dedicated PRI report.