Responsible Investor

However, Huijnen is keen to point out that SPF does not consider exclusions as the lynchpin of its SRI policy: “We believe the work we do in engaging with companies over things like the UN Global Compact is more important because we believe that companies should actively promote sustainability and human rights as encouraged by the Compact.
We also believe that engagement must be thorough: contact is made with the company via all means, letters, e-mail, telephone and we actively vote at companies’ annual general meetings. Because we want to see results from engagement, we ask the companies we talk with to make explicit and quantifiable changes.”
For its extra financial research on companies, the company first takes data from an independent research company before complementing this with its own additional research and then applying it where necessary to engagement initiatives or stock selection. Huijnen says: “For 2008 we also have a number of priority issues that we are engaging on. For the railways pension

scheme this includes child labour, the environment and human rights. For the public transport pension fund moreover remuneration is a key issue. “In terms of specific SRI investment strategies, SPF has invested €15m in microfinance and also mandated for managers to run a commitment to biofuel investment in Africa. It also recently signed up to the Carbon Disclosure Project. Hermsen says: “We believe that transparency on carbon disclosure is valuable for our investments because of the financial implications of forthcoming legislation. It’s also, of course, an environmental question.
He says SPF is also looking at the question of sustainability in relation to emerging markets equity investments and private and public real estate allocations: “It’s a little more complicated than what we have done to date and we are in the process of evaluating what we can do in terms of sustainability. Our goal is to make it part of the way we make every investment decision.

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