Responsible investments

Responsible investments generally mean taking into account environmental (E) and social (S) responsibility, and corporate governance (G) in the investment process. These issues, often labelled ESG together, have an impact on the sustainable development of a company and can also affect performance in asset management.

SPK is a signatory of the Principles for Responsible Investments (PRI). This means we must follow six guiding principles for responsible investments with the aim of implementing and integrating environmental, social and corporate governance factors – together ESG factors – into investment processes.

SPK strive to avoid investments in companies that do breach, or risk breaching, the international guidelines, conventions and norms that SPK has set out to follow.

• UN Global Compact; ten principles about human rights, labor law issues, environment and corruption, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and the UN Convention Against Corruption.

• OECD Guidelines for multinational enterprises; partly overlapping UN Global Compact but also including aspects of how companies should manage information disclosure, consumer interests, science and technology, competition and taxation.

• International conventions on controversial Controversial weapons refer to cluster bombs, anti-personnel mines, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and biological weapons.

Further, goal no. 13 (“Climate Action”) of the UN Sustainable Development Goals according to Agenda 2030, has initially been given the highest priority in SPK’s ongoing sustainability work.

SPK generally works with fund solutions. Before we invest in a new fund, we conduct a thorough review of the external fund manager’s investment process and sustainability work, to assess whether it is compatible with SPK’s Sustainability Policy. In the ongoing sustainability work we continuously evaluate and follow-up on hired fund managers’ integration of sustainability risks in investment decisions and consideration of adverse impacts of investments. We conduct annual reviews of fund company holdings based on international guidelines, conventions and norms and reviews based on certain exposure limits established by SPK. Each year, a calculation of the carbon footprint of certain asset classes in the portfolio will be carried out, according to Swedish Insurance’s recommendation. The goal is for the carbon footprint of the portfolio to be lower than the carbon footprint of the corresponding benchmark. If the carbon footprint is deemed to be too high, SPK initiates a dialogue with the relevant fund manager in order to reduce the carbon footprint of the portfolio.

As a fund unit holder, SPK cannot exercise the corporate governance made possible by participation at general meetings. However, to exert some influence on company management SPK participates together with other institutional investors, in a group for collaborative engagement with companies.

You can read more about our work with responsible investments and sustainability in SPK’s Sustainability Policy and our reports on sustainability (“Hållbarhetsrapport”, in Swedish only) and engagement (“Rapport Påverkansdialoger”). You find these reports here: https://www.spk.se/hallbarhet/policys-och-rapporter/

Information related to the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) is available in Swedish here: https://www.spk.se/hallbarhet/ansvarsfulla-investeringar/disclosureforordningen/

A summary of SPK’s Statement on principal adverse impacts of investment decisions on sustainability factors is available in English here: Principal adverse impacts – Summary in English