NETHERLANDS - The €187bn Dutch civil service pension fund Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP has joined the Enhanced Analytics Initiative as a full member.

The EAI was set up just over a year ago by a group including pension funds such Dutch health care scheme PGGM and the UK’s Universities Superannuation Scheme to challenge broker research.

PGGM’s then chief investment officer Roderick Munsters was involved at the time. Today, as CIO at ABP, he said: “ABP believes that companies with the best sustainable strategies, which encompass financial, social, environmental and corporate governance factors, will deliver the best long-term performance.

“Therefore we consider it essential to integrate extra-financial information throughout our mainstream investment process.

“The difficulty is that while progress is being made, good quality data and research on extra-financial issues is still broadly lacking and as a result ABP decided to join the Enhanced Analytics Initiative to actively support better investment research."

ABP has committed to allocate a minimum of 5% of its annual broker commissions to the research organizations who do the best analysis on the “extra-financial and intangible issues” that can affect a company’s or a sector’s performance.

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