The Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) has published the results of a major consultation on what its signatories want from it in the future.
Nearly 1,000 members of the United Nations-backed body, representing 38% of the assets under management it represents, responded to surveys or participated in workshops as part of its strategic review.
PRI has around 5,000 signatories across the world and has become one of the key providers of investor guidance, technical support and coordination on sustainability and ESG topics over the past 17 years.
Chief operating officer Esther Teeken told IPE that respondents had stressed the role of the PRI as a convener of “the conversations that matter most”.
“To do this effectively, we need to be mindful of the different operating realities for our signatories, which represent a huge range of investment mandates, levels of internal capacity and, in short, are at different levels of advancement in their responsible investment progression”.
In an overview of the feedback published today, PRI noted “a need to strengthen the value proposition for large signatories, including large asset owners”.
The majority of signatories have had their fees increased by 7%, but around 350 of the largest signatories will be subject to an alternative price change, due to be announced shortly.
Around 120 directly-affected institutions provided feedback on the price hike as part of the consultation, with PRI noting that “the majority of responses expressed concern that PRI’s new fee bands for large asset owners and investment managers come at a challenging time and that our value proposition was unclear to support the uplift in fee bands”.
PRI’s board today said it would provide further clarity on the value of its work to large asset owners and investment houses, and offer evidence of what it can bring in the future, as part of the introduction of the new fees.
In a letter in May, Norges Bank Investment Management said it welcomed the opportunity to feed into a new strategy, and praised the PRI’s “goal to enhance the added value of the organisation for its signatories”.
Three quarters of respondents to the survey said they supported PRI’s plans to stop requiring members to report annually on their responsible investment performance, and instead allow them to disclose information on a voluntary basis.
Those voluntary disclosures would be used to back up another of the PRI’s big proposals: to introduce ‘progression pathways’, through which signatories identify their responsible investment and ESG objectives, and then explain how they are making progress towards those goals.
According to today’s summary document, 70% of respondents want PRI to provide KPIs that will allow that progress to be comparable across peers.
The board has signed off on a new strategy, which will be published in August ahead of PRI’s annual meeting for signatories.
Read the digital edition of IPE’s latest magazine
No comments yet