Sustainable results
We firmly believe that engagement is the tool to achieve sustainable change. After all, excluding a company and selling the investment simply means giving up your influence. For this reason, we engage in conversations with companies about their policies and the actions they take. In doing so, we generally form a collective with other institutional investors. We believe that active shareholder engagement keeps companies vigilant and encourages them to have a greater focus on sustainability.
In the period from 1 January until 31 December 2023, we have:
Engagement and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s)
The pension fund supports the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The engagement we conduct with companies is aligned to these SDGs. The pension fund has given extra priority to four SDGs:
SDG 5: Gender Equality
SDG 7: Affordable and Sustainable Energy
SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
SDG 13: Climate Action
A large part of our engagement activities can be linked to the SDGs. Below is an overview of our engagement numbers during this year.
We chart the effectiveness of our engagement programme by measuring progress in milestones. Each engagement path has four milestones. When a milestone is reached, we speak of progress. As a pension fund, we believe that engagement contributes to a more sustainable business operation yet making strides and achieving a lasting impact but takes time.
This chart shows for each SDG (Sustainability Development Goal) in how many pathways progress has been made, measured over the period from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023.
Our pension fund actively makes use of its shareholder voting rights. This is a responsibility we see as an opportunity to initiate sustainable change. Every year, we vote at a large number of shareholders' meetings. In doing so, we make sure that our voting rights are in line with the dialogue we have with companies. Because we believe that this will strengthen the effectiveness of our engagement.
Voting results
In Q4 2023, we voted on 7,565 resolutions in 816 shareholders' meetings. In 470 meetings, we voted against the resolution at least once.
In total, we voted against or abstained on 1,189 resolutions. The issues we voted against are shown in this summary.
