Environmental

Pensam switches €2bn Nordea AM mandates to sustainability

Award comes after selection of MSCI climate index as benchmark for portfolio

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Danish labour pension scheme Pensam has tapped Nordea Asset Management (NAM) to manage a €2.16bn global equity portfolio in line with climate and sustainability considerations. 

NAM has a longstanding relationship with the €20bn Danish pension fund, previously overseeing a number of regional equity strategies covering North America, Europe, Japan, and Asia Pacific. The new agreement converts existing mandates held by NAM to the global strategy.

According to NAM’s Head of Distribution, Anders Madsen, the overall value of assets under management remains more or less unchanged.

Claus Jørgensen, Pensam’s Chief Investment Officer, said: “Changing the existing mandates to this new global mandate ticks the box for PenSam on a number of crucial parameters. The mandate provides exposure to equity risk premia and at the same time manages to integrate the goals that PenSam has set in relation to climate and sustainability.”

Nordea’s mandate accounts for nearly half of Pensam’s €4.8bn global listed equities portfolio, the remainder of which is managed by French manager Amundi under a customised climate-tilted passive strategy.

The recent award of both mandates is part of a restructuring of Pensam’s global listed equities allocation in line with the fund’s adoption of the MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI) Climate index – which weights constituents according to climate performance – as its portfolio benchmark earlier this year. This means that the investment performance of both NAM and Amundi-managed equity strategies will be measured in relation to the climate index.

Pensam previously benchmarked investments in global equities against the broad-based MSCI ACWI. 

Last year, the fund blacklisted 26 companies including coal producers and oil companies with ‘hard to access’ reserves. Pensam has removed a total of 100 oil, coal and tar sands businesses from its portfolio since 2016. The Danish provider also plans to invest a tenth of its assets in green and sustainable leaders by 2025.

Pensam’s equity portfolio had a carbon footprint 35% smaller than the ACWI as at February.