News

We are delighted to announce that the Wales Pension Partnership (WPP) is now a signatory to the UK Stewardship Code.

https://www.frc.org.uk/investors/uk-stewardship-code/uk-stewardship-code-signatories

The 2020 UK Stewardship Code sets a high bar for stewardship, a standard to which the WPP sought to meet through its approach to responsible investment. The WPP is therefore delighted to be recognised as a signatory to the Code. 

Our report for the year ending 31 March 2021 covered the first step on WPP’s journey, a year when we put in place solid foundations through our appointment of Robeco as a stewardship provider, the establishment of our Responsible Investment Sub-Group and began the process of ensuring that our policy commitments were implemented.  We also worked closely with Link Fund Solutions and Russell Investments during the year to develop and implement an innovative decarbonisation strategy for our Global Opportunities Fund, a process that we have since sought to extend to our other Sub-Funds.

We recognise that there is much more to do but we remain committed to building our understanding of responsible investment practices and evolving our approach.  We learned much from the reporting process and have already taken steps to implement some of those learnings, for example, through increasing the scrutiny of our providers and the assets they manage for us.  We do this recognising that the WPP has a responsibility to all eight Constituent Authorities within Wales, and the members of their pension schemes, to be effective stewards of their assets.