The world’s largest pension fund has reaffirmed its commitment to ESG principles with the publication of a new sustainability investment policy. As part of this new policy, Japan’s Goverment Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), which has US$1.7 trillion AUM, said that a “reduction of sustainability-related risks and improvement of sustainability of markets” can only be realized when investee companies and other stakeholders of capital markets understand the significance of sustainability and reflect it in their daily business activities. “We therefore believe that information disclosure on sustainability is an important means of engagement for GPIF,” said the asset owner. “Based on this view, we will proactively disclose information targeting investee companies and other stakeholders of capital markets, not to mention insureds.” GPIF added that it will be investing in staff and data management systems that are needed to manage the “highly diverse and often unstructured information” requiredfor sustainability investment.
