Initiatives across our business

Initiatives across our business

For more than 100 years, PFA has fulfilled its corporate responsibility by contributing to financial security. Over that time, society – in Denmark and around the world – has evolved. As has PFA. Today, we work purposefully with our corporate responsibility across our business. This means that we focus on climate and environment, social factors and good governance in relation to our investments, suppliers and business partners as well as with our customers and employees. It is important for us to keep our house in order and adopt a holistic approach, while focusing on the areas where we can make the biggest difference for our customers and society.

Employees

Diversity, carbon neutrality by 2025 and a balanced working life

PFA wants corporate responsibility and sustainability to be an integral part of our work – both as a business and as a workplace.

We actively contribute to increased diversity and inclusion

Creating communities and cohesion is rooted in our DNA, meaning that we actively strive to increasing diversity and inclusion. We have set goals for gender diversity in our own management team and work hard to increase the number of women in management roles. We have joined the Danish Chamber of Commerce Diversity Pact and the Danish Industry Diversity Pledge to actively work for and support concrete actions that promote diversity and inclusion in PFA. 

PFA’s office facilities to be carbon neutral by 2025

A more sustainable PFA is also about PFA’s environmental and economic footprint on the world around us. We have formulated an ambition that the footprint from our offices must be carbon neutral by 2025. Our headquarters have therefore been energy-optimised and have solar panels on the roof, which are expected to produce around 20 per cent of our electricity consumption. The rest of the electricity comes from 100 per cent certified green sources. We have also decided to convert our car fleet to electric cars by the end of 2026. Until we reach our target of being carbon neutral, we will compensate for our carbon footprint by buying credits in climate projects.

Focus on flexibility and health

One of the keys to a balanced working life is flexibility, which is why all PFA employees have the option to work from home for up to two days a week and the option to reduce their working hours to 80 per cent for a short or longer period of time – regardless of their position.  

We do not only help our customers become healthier, we also lead by example and try out new exercise methods and health offers. We have a health strategy that is fundamentally about supporting job satisfaction and well-being among employees, and we focus on considering the preferences and life phases that employees have and are in as part of our various health offers. 

 

Clear expectations and a whistleblower policy

We have a number of employee policies to ensure that employees at PFA know what is expected of them, also in situations where dilemmas might need to be managed. Our policies are regularly revised to ensure that they align with PFA’s values. 

We also have a whistleblower scheme where employees in the PFA Group can anonymously report unethical, illegal or irresponsible behaviour that violates PFA’s policies or values. This might be fraud, bribery, blackmail, misuse of inside information or violation of financial legislation. The employees of the PFA Group must go through a compulsory e-learning course where they learn how to use the whistleblower scheme. The purpose of the course is to increase awareness of the scheme.

Responsible tax behaviour 

In terms of our financial footprint, we strive to ensure responsible tax behaviour. We want to promote a well-functioning national and global tax system. We do this by applying both Danish and international tax principles. We discourage aggressive tax planning and have guidelines for implementing responsible tax practices in our investment processes. In collaboration with a number of other pension companies, we have developed a set of common principles for how asset managers should behave when it comes to tax.

Customers

A customer community that makes a difference

PFA has approximately 1.3 million customers and more than 6,000 corporate and organisational customers. The customer community is a commitment and an opportunity for us to make a difference together with our customers.

Good advisory services, strong prevention effort and access to customer representatives

We offer our customers advice on how to optimise and continuously adapt their pension plan so that it will provide financial security throughout their lives. From the day they retire and if they fall ill, get pain or suffer an injured, we are prepared to help our customers to prevent long-term sickness absence. 

We want to give our customers the best possible customer experience and therefore involve them in the development of products and services through our Customer Panel and Senior Customer Board. We have introduced a system of customer representatives that any customer who feels misinformed or badly treated can use.  

We use state-of-the-art technology to help customers

We use artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance our general service and advisory services, provide more self-service options, streamline case processing and identify potential customers who might be facing long-term illness. We comply with data protection legislation and have specified our own data-ethical principles and data ethics that are intended to help us navigate when we use advanced data application and artificial intelligence. All employees take an annual e-learning course on protection of personal data and information security.

Dialogue with companies creates results

A healthy working life is crucial for well-being. PFA provides advisory services to companies and organisations on what they can do to create a healthier working life for their employees and members. We have developed a model that provides inspiration and concrete tools to improve working life, and we have also established Advisory Tables on the healthy working life, which is a forum for our biggest customers, researchers and experts. We also have a Customer Board consisting of up to 100 decision-makers from our largest corporate and organisational customers. The Customer Board provides input to PFA’s management in relation to pension policy issues and development of new products and services.

 


 

A whistleblower system

We have a whistleblower scheme that allows, employees, customers and external business partners to report on potential issues in a secure and confidential manner if they suspect or have knowledge about any offence, fraud or other fraudulent conduct that violate PFA’s policies and values. Reporting can be done confidentially and anonymously. The whistleblower system is hosted by an external IT supplier to ensure anonymity. The whistleblower system is also independent of all other PFA systems. 

Investments

We believe that corporate responsibility and ESG pay off

PFA’s purpose is to give our customers the best possible financial security when they retire, lose their work capacity or become ill, and at the same time, we want to contribute to a positive societal development. We have around DKK 600 billion assets under management, and our investments therefore have a significant impact. We believe that, all else being equal, sustainable business models will generate higher returns over time and that it therefore pays to invest in companies that work professionally with corporate responsibility and sustainability.

We therefore work systematically with the so-called ESG factors, which include climate and environmental data (E – Environment), social data (Social) and governance data (Governance). This is based on e.g. the UN Global Compact’s 10 principles for what companies must live up to in relation to human rights, labour rights, environmental rights and anti-corruption. We have therefore written these principles into our ‘Policy for Responsible Investments and Active Ownership’, which is the policy that forms the basis for our commitment to ESG and responsible investments.

Active ownership and insight are the key to influence

Our work with investments and ESG factors is driven by data that we receive from either the companies themselves, independent suppliers or through our own research. We continuously screen our investments based on this data so that we can take action if companies do not comply with our policies. Our primary tools are direct dialogue with companies, voting at their general meetings and, ultimately, divestment and exclusion if we consider our options exhausted. The keyword is active ownership, as we believe that we can make a greater difference for the benefit of society by staying invested in the companies and impacting them from the inside than by divesting and leaving the seat at the negotiating table to other investors.

We comply with international frameworks and regulations

PFA’s reporting and communication on ESG takes place in accordance with the initiatives formulated under the EU’s Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth, including the so-called disclosure regulation. We also comply with various international guidelines and sanctions and, for example, have a thorough process to ensure that we exclude government bonds from countries that we deem are inappropriate to invest in. Finally, we have formulated our own requirements that we send to our financial partners in connection with unlisted investments as a starting point for a dialogue about our expectations for responsible business practices.

We want to be transparent about our work with responsible investments and therefore regularly publish relevant information under corporate responsibility on pfa.dk so that the outside world can follow what we do.

 


 


Partnerships

Collaboration is valuable

PFA represents a significant part of the Danish pension system and is one of the largest pension companies in Europe. This gives us a great opportunity to contribute positively to finding solutions to many of the challenges we all face in the Danish society and globally. We constantly engage in a dialogue with our customers, organisations, NGOs, authorities, politicians, media and a wide range of other stakeholders to create optimum conditions for financial security in Denmark and to contribute to finding solutions to common challenges. We believe that long-term and mutually beneficial collaboration based on openness and trust will create the best results.

Open dialogue is important to us, and we contribute through market research, analyses, commentary and opinion pieces in order to highlight issues concerning savings, insurance, prevention, health and the environment.

We aim to focus our efforts on the areas where we can make the biggest difference. We therefore focus mainly on collaborations and partnerships within: Financial security, Green transition, Health and A good senior life. Read more about our collaborations and partnerships under each of the 4 focus areas.

PFA has also established PFA Brug Livet Fonden, which since 2009 has supported a large number of voluntary organisations in their work to help others.

Stakeholders - PFA Pension 

Suppliers

PFA places demands on our suppliers

Good supplier management is an essential part of minimising the overall footprint of PFA’s business and ensuring that we live up to the international principles for corporate responsibility. We are committed to complying with international sustainability guidelines, standards and frameworks, including the UN’s 10 Global Compact principles, the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and the OECD’s Guidelines for Responsible Business Conduct, including the ILO conventions on fundamental labour rights and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

For many years, we have expected our suppliers to report on their work on human rights and the environment and the considerations they have made to avoid having negative impacts, including the management systems the supplier has used.

The importance of responsible business practices

Specifically, we require our suppliers to have responsible business practices when it comes to child labour, discrimination, forced labour, working environment, privacy, corruption, environment, and climate. The requirements are set out via our Code of Conduct, which allows PFA to carry out checks at suppliers and terminate contracts in case of non-compliance. 

A constantly evolving area

Responsible supplier management is constantly evolving and new regulations are regularly introduced. Especially greater reporting responsibilities in terms of sustainability and IT security involves stricter requirements for how companies obtain and report data from their suppliers. This is positive, as it means that PFA to a much greater extent will be able to obtain information about our suppliers on an ongoing, automatic, and standardised basis.

It is a considerable task for our suppliers and many are fully engaged in the work, but it is also something that takes time. At PFA, we therefore continuously update our methodology, processes, and governance for following up with our suppliers. We are in ongoing dialogue with our suppliers, both large and small, as well as relevant industry organisations to ensure that the necessary measures are put in place so that we reach our goals safely and, together with our suppliers, live up to our shared social responsibility.