In the Sustainability Report 2020, PDN explains its sustainability policy and accounts for the most significant results over the reporting year 2020.
PDN has a duty to continue to provide good pensions, in whatever circumstances the world finds itself. We invest our members’ pension contributions in a responsible way to ensure that we can offer attractive pensions, now and in the future. And we take our social responsibility in this too. Numerous scientific studies have strengthened our conviction that sustainability does not need to be at the expense of return on investments. On the contrary, we can take more well-considered investment decisions by incorporating information about people, the environment, and good corporate governance in our policy and implementation framework. Certainly because we are investing for the long term.
With the signing of the IMVB covenant we decided to add one or more themed risk focus areas to our policy in 2020. Our choice for themed focus areas allows us to focus on specific societal developments that are important to our members and have been identified as high risk for our investment portfolio. In light of this we aim to focus in particular on two sustainability risks, namely climate change and controversial weapons. This concerns the prevention of negative societal and environmental impact in the investment portfolio. These two themes are also important when considering potential investments.
We exclude activities in companies and countries that the United Nations, the European Union, or the Dutch government deems unacceptable. We do not invest directly in shares or bonds of companies that act in direct contravention of the UN Global Compact's Ten Principles. Manufacturers of controversial weapons, including nuclear weapons, are also excluded even if they do not fall under the exclusion criteria of the Global Compact. Likewise, state bonds of countries that are under sanction by the United Nations or the European Union are excluded. For the most part, these sanctions relate to human rights and weapons issues.
We use Impact Investments to help guide us in achieving both attractive financial returns and social objectives. Our investment decisions are based on the UN's seventeen sustainable development goals.
We ensure total transparency in terms of pension capital investments. Our website features the names of all the companies the fund invests in.
Where possible, investments are managed and evaluated according to Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors.
We encourage companies to effect positive developments in the field of social issues and sustainability. Broader engagement processes are also being initiated to appeal to entire sectors.
We vote at Dutch listed companies in accordance with our voting policy. PDN casts votes at General and Extraordinary Shareholder Meetings of listed companies in the Netherlands.
The members are our foremost priority, and we exist for and because of them. The members agree with our sustainability vision. Within PDN's policy, the members consider an active approach to sustainability to be an important principle. Members consider it to be PDN's responsibility to take account of the consequences for people and the environment when making investments. We also regularly gauge members’ stance towards sustainability. We will evaluate the results of this survey and will refine our policy and communication accordingly.
We are re-determining our ambition and sustainability basic principles in 2021 and will use these to assess whether and how we can focus even more in our sustainability policy and its implementation on our investments’ impact on mankind and the environment, without making concessions on our risk-return profile.
We aim to provide our members with the best possible picture of the sustainability activities we implemented and the results we achieved. We do this via an extensive report in the annual sustainability report and via newsletters on the website and in PDN Magazine.
For PDN, 2021 is all about sustainability. We will reformulate and re-determine our sustainability vision and ambition for the coming years and will use these to further develop our sustainability policy. We are translating the policy into performance indicators and integrating these in our investment categories.
In 2021, we will also focus on the introduction of the IRBC agreement and EU sustainability initiatives such as the EU Taxonomy and the implementation of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation.
Our work to identify and manage sustainability risks in liquid and unlisted investments will also continue. We are also committed to cooperating with multiple parties to promote sustainability at all interfaces.