News

We are delighted to announce that the Wales Pension Partnership (WPP) remains 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 which the WPP seeks to meet through its approach to responsible investment (RI). We are therefore delighted to have retained our signatory status for 2024.

One of WPP’s strengths is the collaboration between the Pool’s underlying partner funds, who we would like to thank for their continued contribution and support, in progressing our work on RI and stewardship. One key outcome from this collaboration over the year was the publication of our first All-Wales Climate Report (AWCR) – which considers how the underlying Welsh Funds have progressed in terms of climate between 2019 and 2022, covering all assets, not just those within the Pool. The report outlined a number of recommendations that focused our stewardship and oversight work over the year, including in how we could evolve our existing investment programmes with a more sustainable focus. This saw us taking initial steps to consider how to evolve both our passive-equity allocations and our fixed-income Sub-Funds. We also initiated work on a WPP-specific climate-focus list, for enhanced scrutiny of climate-affected issuers within materially impacted sectors, and a climate framework, to set a common taxonomy and understanding around climate.

Outwith the AWCR recommendations, we continued work on broadening our fund range through our private-markets suite, developing a real estate investment proposition, which will include a sleeve dedicated to impact and local investment.

WPP’s stewardship work would not have been possible without our external partnerships. On our behalf, Robeco, our Voting & Engagement Provider, voted on more than 15,000 resolutions and had over 900 corporate engagements (across over 600 engagement cases), covering a range of environmental, social & governance issues. We were pleased to have participated in two of Robeco’s client panels over the year, particularly given the new themes selected with our support, Ocean Biodiversity and Hazardous Chemicals. Additionally, we worked closely with both Robeco and Russell Investments, our Investment-Management Solutions Provider, to further strengthen our stewardship approach, developing a set of core escalation principles.

We recognise that there is more work to do and will continue to evolve in collaboration with all eight Constituent Authorities within Wales – and the members of their pension schemes – to be effective stewards of their assets.