ESG Club interview – Border to Coast INTERVIEW – JANE FIRTH


“Engagement alone will not result in real world change.”


Andrew Holt discusses stewardship, driving real change, the data challenge and COP not being much cop with the head of responsible investment at pension pool Border to Coast.


How do you embed ESG and responsible investment into Border to Coast’s invest- ment process? We are a long-term investor and it’s there- fore important that we take a holistic approach to understanding all the risks and opportunities a company faces when we are making investment decisions. Our portfolio managers incorporate material environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues into their investment deci- sions in the same way they think about valuation, management quality, competi- tive advantage and profitability. This starts with the research we conduct, whether it’s for listed equities, fixed income or private markets. ESG is fac- tored into that initial process through detailed stock and issuer research and pri- vate markets due diligence. It’s also a central component of our exter- nal


asset manager procurement and


appointment process. We monitor man- agers quarterly and conduct an annual deep dive on how they include responsi- ble investment in their process.


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What is your approach to investing in inno- vative climate change technologies? We recognise that more investment is needed in infrastructure and technology to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy. Engagement alone


will not


result in real world change. We are also looking for good investment opportunities. That’s why we have committed to increas- ing our investment in climate solutions with the support of our partner funds through their asset allocation decisions. We are facilitating this through our pri- vate markets programme, which through the infrastructure offering includes an energy transition theme.


In 2022, we also launched a dedicated Climate Opportunities offering targeting investments that will have a material pos- itive impact on climate change and sup- port long-term net-zero carbon emission goals.


You have an ambitious net-zero plan. How is that going?


We have always factored climate risk into our investment analysis and have contin- ued to evolve this process. Border to Coast has worked across the investment team to understand the climate risks and opportunities in our portfolios and con- duct enhanced risk assessments for the largest emitters using a range of tools and data. We have communicated our net-zero tar- gets to our external managers and are working with them to implement those into the portfolios they manage. Stew- ardship, and working with companies to have viable transition plans, is critical to reaching net zero and so is a central component of our Net Zero Implementa- tion Plan.


The low carbon transition is already one of our four priority engagement themes and we have developed our stewardship approach to support the ambitious targets we have for financed emissions under engagement.


Our voting policy has been strengthened again on climate change with a focus on


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