Policy and Guidelines for Responsible Investments

Respect for human rights and the environment

Respect for human rights and the environment 

PFA’s policy for responsible investments and active ownership forms the framework for our work with integrating responsibility in our investment processes. PFA bases its policy for responsible investments on international standards and principles. Among other things, this includes global guidelines for how a responsible investor should work with human rights and the climate and environment. This also applies to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, where PFA as an investor will make particular contributions to realising a number of the goals. The works is based on:

• The UN-backed principles for responsible investments, PRI.
• The 10 principles of the UN Global Compact for respecting human rights, employer rights, the environment and anti-corruption work.
• The UN’s guidelines for business and human rights, based on the rights covered by the International Bill of Human Rights.
• The OECD’s guidelines, ‘Responsible Business Conduct for Institutional Investors’, which concerns the implementation and prioritisation of due diligence to find out whether an investment negatively impacts society.
• The Paris Agreement, which was signed during COP21, aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases.
• The OECD’s ‘Base Erosion and Profit Shifting’ action plan (BEPS), which is aimed at closing tax loopholes and preventing double taxation and double non-taxation.
• The act on the implementation of the shareholder rights directive, which deals with principles for exercising active ownership.

Policy for responsible investments and active ownership

How our policy for responsible investments and active ownership works

The policy applies to all investments decided on by PFA. It is intended to ensure:

• That we integrate climate, environmental, social and governance factors in our investment decision-making processes (also known as the ESG factors: environmental, social, governance)
• That we screen all companies in our portfolio
• That we enter into dialogues with companies that are suspected of violating or which have violated the policy in order to influence them to shift to a more responsible approach
• That we divest of or exclude companies in cases where the company is not interested in entering into a dialogue or if the dialogue does not result in positive changes
• That we exclude companies without entering into a dialogue if they produce controversial armaments such as cluster bombs, anti-personnel land mines and nuclear weapons.
• That we are transparent about our critical dialogues and exclusion lists so that the public can monitor developments and ensure that the investments we make are in accordance with our policy.