France’s ERAFP is launching a tender to find one or more specialist consulting firms to assess climate change-related risks and opportunities.

The €23.5bn mandatory pension scheme for civil servants said the tender was being carried out to measure the exposure to climate risks in its portfolios, and that the task would be split into two lots.

The first lot is to measure the exposure of ERAFP’s equity and bond portfolios to climate change-related risks and opportunities.

This assessment will be based on indicators such as carbon footprint or contribution to the energy transition, and will evaluate the European, North American, Pacific and French equity portfolios, the international convertible bonds portfolio and the euro and US dollar-denominated corporate bond portfolios, as well as the pension fund’s government bond portfolios.

The second lot is to find a firm to help the pension fund design a methodology to measure and analyse exposure to climate change-related challenges in its real estate, infrastructure and private equity portfolios. 

“These portfolios’ exposure to climate change-related challenges will then be evaluated based on the developed methodology,” ERAFP said.

The contracts will last for three years, and the deadline for submitting bids is 30 November.

Earlier this week, the French pension fund announced an award of two contracts to ESG corporate analysis firm Vigeo.

One is to assess ERAFP’s equity and corporate bond investments against the pension fund’s SRI criteria, and the other is to assess the fund’s sovereign, supranational and sub-sovereign bonds (SSA) portfolio on the same basis.

At the same time, ERAFP warded three-year shareholder voting advisory contracts to Proxinvest and ISS.

Proxinvest was awarded the mandate to analyse the shareholder meetings of French companies, while ISS won the mandate to analyse the shareholder meetings of international companies.

The tenders for these mandates were announced by ERAFP in June.

In other news, the Ethos Foundation and six Swiss pension funds have launched a programme to “engage” with companies listed abroad about governance, environmental and other matters.

The initiative has been named the Ethos Engagement Pool International (EEP International).

The group said it was aiming to raise companies’ awareness about corporate governance, as well as environmental and social responsibility best practice.

The pension funds and Ethos said the move followed the dialogue programme that had already been set up with companies listed in Switzerland and was meant to facilitate the talks between investors and the companies they invested in internationally.

The six pension funds are Caisse Inter-Entreprises de Prévoyance Professionnelle (CIEPP); Caisse de pension d’UNIA; CAP Prévoyance; Prosperita Stiftung für die berufliche Vorsorge; Abendrot Stiftung and Prévoyance.ne and Caisse de pensions de la fonction publique du canton de Neuchâtel.

Collectively, they have assets under management of CHF15bn (€13.8bn).

The Ethos Foundation is made up of more than 200 Swiss pension funds and other tax-exempt institutions, and says it aims to promote socially responsible investment and “a stable and prosperous socio-economic environment”.

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