ESG Club
ESG CONFERENCE 2022 – PENSIONS, PEOPLE, PLANET
9 & 10 MARCH
Rachel Pine is head of content – conferences at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA)
The PLSA’s fund membership – 1,300 schemes investing £1.5trn on behalf of 30 million savers – have let us know that ESG is the single most pressing concern they face. Whether they are complying with the complicated new Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures for Pensions regime, responding to scheme members and other stakeholders regard- ing their schemes’ investment in fossil fuels, or examining their own engage- ment and stewardship policies, environ- ment, social and governance-focused investing is a multi-tiered undertaking for UK schemes. This will require large amounts of thought and resource require- ment in the months and years to come. Hot on the heels of COP26, and with the strictest climate investment regulations for pensions in the developed world, UK schemes lead not just the global pensions scene in this area, but the nation’s finan- cial services industry as well. ESG22 – Pensions, people, planet, is the second outing of the PLSA’s ESG Confer- ence, which we debuted in 2021. While we hoped to attract 400 attendees, we were surprised and delighted to find we had 800 attendees, who engaged with the content, speakers and each other across a variety of session types. This year’s con- ference, while certainly not ‘more of the same’, promises a comprehensive view of the
challenges and opportunities that
ESG and climate focus bring to pensions vis a vis regulation, member communica- tions and investment. With broadly focused plenaries and more granular information available in the con- current sessions, attendees will be able to access content that demonstrates not just the importance of including environ-
36 | portfolio institutional | February 2022 | issue 110 Therese Coffey
PI Partnership – PLSA
pensions to the rest of financial services. Faith Ward, chief responsible investment officer at Brunel Pension Partnership, which invests £35bn on behalf of 10 local authority funds, and who chairs the influ- ential Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, will be explaining how our pensions fit into the COP26 promises of mitigation, adaptation, finance and col- laboration. Dr Tamsin Edwards, lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change’s 2021 paper which
showed that the climate situation had escalated from concern to emergency, will talk us through the science of climate change, showing how and where we can affect a difference.
Tamsin Edwards
They are joined by speakers representing UK schemes, academia, regulators and the businesses that deliver pensions ser- vices, including asset managers, invest- ment consultants, legal firms and index providers, all with the goal of bringing the most critical issues in ESG investment to the forefront.
For further details, visit:
https://bit.ly/3nY1hJW
Faith Ward
ment, social and governance factors in investment decisions, but practical solu- tions for compliance, for explaining ESG information to scheme members and stakeholders alike, and for understanding how ESG metrics may impact investment returns now and in the future. To ensure that attendees receive the most accurate and up-to-date information, we have assembled a list of speakers who are influential not just in the UK, but on the world stage, too. We are particularly pleased that Thérèse Coffey MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, will be joining us to dis- cuss how the government intends to move climate investing outward from
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