Annual Report 2021

The PRI will continue to guide, support and represent signatories to the six Principles, but as ever the real work is done by our signatories themselves.

During the past year, we have needed to respond to the global challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic, while also maintaining our focus on signatories and the promotion of responsible investment practices.

We have worked closely with signatories to develop our 2021-24 strategy, grounding it in the perspective of the investor, drawing on our distinctive strengths and determining where we are best placed to deploy our efforts.

ESG incorporation and stewardship are our core business and remain a major focus of our work. Increasingly however, our signatories are recognising that the real-world sustainability outcomes they contribute to shaping through their investment activities feed back into the financial risks they face.

Therefore, our strategy also aims to build bridges between financial risk, opportunities, and real-world outcomes. In the next three years, we will help signatories understand what this looks like in practice.

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Responsible investors

Empower asset owners

Regulators are increasingly catching up to the idea that for asset owners to fulfil their duties to beneficiaries, their responsibilities must extend beyond the risk/return profile to include the wider role that investments play in real economies and societies.

Support investors incorporating ESG issues

Increase the depth of insight and practice in asset classes where ESG incorporation is mature and penetration high, build the foundations for ESG incorporation in asset classes where it is still new, and lead signatories’ awareness and response to existing and emerging ESG issues.

Foster a community of active owners

Our work on active ownership is increasingly about focusing on the quality of engagement, rather than just the quantity, and how we can support signatories to see real results from their active ownership activities.

Showcase leadership and increase accountability

For signatory status to be meaningful, and for beneficiaries to see the benefits they are entitled to, we must ensure that signatories are living up to the commitments they make when signing up to the Principles.

Convene and educate responsible investors

Connecting signatories with each other, bringing insights from the academic world, and providing formal training are all crucial to expanding collective knowledge on responsible investment.

Sustainable markets

Challenge barriers to a sustainable financial system

We continue to engage with policy makers around the world, with a focus on the European Union, China, the US and UK. Our work this year has included engaging with G7 and G20 host governments on aligning financial policy with sustainability; updating our regulation database to cover 650 sustainable finance policies globally and publishing a policy toolkit with the World Bank on how policy makers can contribute to a sustainable financial system.

Drive meaningful data throughout markets

Reliable, timely information is needed for beneficiaries to understand and influence their investments, for asset owners to monitor their managers and for investment managers to accurately price assets and assess risk.

A prosperous world for all

Champion climate action

Climate change continues to be the number one issue of concern for signatories, but there is still a considerable gap between investor awareness and investor action if the Paris Agreement target is to be met.

Enable real-world impact

Beyond the need to improve how ESG issues’ financial relevance is captured throughout the market, investors increasingly need to better demonstrate the impact that their investment decisions have in the real world.