ESG interview – London CIV INTERVIEW – JACQUELINE JACKSON
“Our net-zero target is the most ambitious of any LGPS pool in the UK.”
London CIV’s head of responsible investment sat down with Mona Dohle to discuss the benefit of being an artist in finance, performing ‘stock-takes’, keeping 32 pension schemes happy and a 136-year forecast.
You have been head of responsible invest- ment at London CIV for two years. Could you tell me about your role?
I develop and implement London CIV’s responsible investment strategy. Within my team there are two responsible invest- ment managers, Alison Lee and Gustave Loriot, who specialise in stewardship and climate risk.
Alison leads our work on stewardship and engagement while Gus specialises in cli- mate risk analytics. We all do a bit of eve- rything, working together through ongo- ing and cyclical processes, starting with research and review. At the beginning of each year, we perform ‘stock-takes’
to understand our clients’
priorities, determine what their policies stipulate, assess what our peers are doing and forecast any regulation that may be coming into force. Then, as needed, we re-develop our own strategy documents, namely on climate and stewardship, the over-arching responsible investment and engagement [RI&E] policy and the voting guidelines.
The implementation phase is ongoing. For example, we interview and meet with
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asset managers quarterly, while collabo- rating with other market participants to drive engagement. We engage with companies directly, through our engagement partner, EOS, and through fund managers. We then dis- close annually against all policies and strat- egies to evaluate how we are performing in terms of delivering real-world outcomes.
London CIV has more client funds than other local government pension scheme [LGPS] pool at 32. Does that mean you have 32 approaches to ESG? We meet with our clients’ frequently to understand their priorities in order to fac- tor them into the over-arching RI&E policy. With regards to ESG, there are some areas where our clients disagree. The most robust approach to navigating this fact is to simply follow best practice responsible investment principles wherever possible, and to ensure that London CIV’s coverage is as comprehensive as possible. For example, if one client is looking at human rights, while another is focusing on climate change, we should be able to
provide insight, analysis and activity on both. Similarly, our net-zero target is the most ambitious of any LGPS pool in the UK. Having set our target early means that no client should find the pool a hindrance, but rather a strong support that helps cli- ents achieve or surpass their own targets.
Does the responsible investment strategy only apply to the £14.6bn of pooled assets? What about the assets which are not yet pooled?
I would call it more of a stepped approach. Our responsible investment policy for the most part applies to areas where we have the highest exposure and direct influence. That means our implementation strategy is focussed on pooled funds in the LCIV fund range.
Our primary focus is to liaise with our fund managers, but we also assist and advise clients wherever we can add value. For that reason, we still support clients with off-pooled responsible investment guidance and analysis where required. That could be in terms of climate data analytics and
stewardship, we might
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