In December 2020, the Environment Agency Pension Fund won ‘The Best Pension Fund in the United Kingdom’ Award at the IPE Awards 2020. IPE is Europe’s premier Pensions website.
The judges commented: "This fund should be applauded, with strong performance figures backed by a proactive, efficient and innovative response to the pandemic, whilst keeping focus on environment, social and governance issues and the views of its members."
But we didn’t stop there. We also won the ‘Best approach to Sustainable Investment’ at the LAPF awards. (LAPF Investments is the magazine for local authority pension investment specialists). All this in the year when we were also recognised by the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment as a global leader on responsible investment.
One of our aims is to make you proud of your pension fund. We think it’s important that you know which companies your money is being invested in and why.
In Spring 2020, we sent out a survey and 2,500 of you responded. Such was the level of interest, we thought we’d delve a bit deeper. In July, we ran a series of events to get your views on how we invest, engage and communicate.
The feedback from those that took part was that you’re pleased your pension is being managed with responsible investment at its core. And you want even more ambition.
92% of those who responded to the survey think it’s important that the pension fund had a net zero target.
We’ve been working very hard since to come up with something ambitious, while maintaining our strong funding level. We hope to launch this soon.
There were lots of suggestions about how we could improve our communications, in particular relating to the companies we invest in. We tested a new approach and hope to procure this in the new year. We’ll publish a report on the findings shortly.
Doing all this work are 10 of us in the Pension Fund Management team, normally based in Horizon House in Bristol. Some of us have investment backgrounds, some accounting and some pension. And some are dye-in-the-wool EA employees. Our work is governed through the Pension Committee, a mixture of EA Board members, executive managers from the EA and Natural Resources Wales and member representatives.
We’re all really proud of what we’ve achieved and we’re working on ways to keep improving. We’ve got a few ideas lined up for this year. However, if you can’t wait and you’d like to speak to us before then, please email EAPF@environment-agency.gov.uk
Thanks for being part of the Best Pension Fund in the United Kingdom.