Industriens Pension communicated with around 500 companies on responsibility in 2020, its highest ever number.

In total had a dialogue with 498 listed companies as part of its work on responsible investment last year. At the same time, a total of 3,274 proposals were voted on at general meetings of companies in the portfolio last year. Of these, the pension company voted 356 times against the management of the companies in question.

“Active ownership is a fundamental and very important foundation in all our work with responsible investments. Experience shows that through active ownership we can gain influence and promote both the companies' long-term value creation and sustainable development,” Industriens Pension CEO, Laila Mortensen, said.

In many cases, Industriens Pension enters into a dialogue with the companies in collaboration with a significant number of other like-minded institutional investors with similar concerns. This type of dialogue often provides better opportunities to influence companies, it said.

The dialogues addressed a wide range of issues, including issues of climate and environmental issues, labour rights, human rights and tax issues.

In addition, Industriens Pension has excluded government bonds from 21 countries in the portfolio because they do not sufficiently respect fundamental human rights and workers' rights. These are countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The provider also does not invest in government bonds issued by countries that are subject to sanctions from the EU or the UN, such as Myanmar and Syria.

The exclusion of government bonds is based on a ranking of all countries in the world measured by the extent to which they comply with the considerations relevant to Industriens Pension's investment policy. The ranking is carried out by an external partner, Sustainalytics, which, based on data from recognised sources such as the World Bank, UN agencies and the ILO, assigns all countries in the world a score divided into a large number of indicators.

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