The Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) has confirmed it now has 500 asset-owner signatories, having seen significant growth in the past 12 months.
The latest to join the PRI is Protección SA, a corporate pension fund based in Colombia.
The signatories are collectively responsible for $90 trillion in assets under management and, according to the PRI, is now a “powerful force committing to further mainstream responsible investment”.
See also: Who are the oldest UN PRI signatories?
Lorenzo Saa, chief signatory relations officer at the PRI, said: “Important steps have already been made in this community. Seventy percent of asset owner signatories now actively include ESG criteria in their RfPs to select investment managers.
“Though a range of approaches exist, our first Leaders’ Group put a spotlight on leading practices in how asset owners select, appoint and monitor their investment managers.
In addition, asset owner signatories tell us that PRI reporting data is useful as part of their evaluation of their investment managers’ activities.”
When the PRI launched in April 2016, there were more asset owner signatories than investment managers. According to Mr Saa, more than 2,000 investment managers are now a part of the PRI due to the requirements of many asset owners.
“Whilst the PRI remains an asset owner-led organisation, investment manager signatories now represent over 70% of the signatory base, and more than 50% of the AUM of the Willis Towers Watson top 500 investment managers globally,” he added.
Of the asset owners at the PRI, the largest by AUM are based in Japan, France, Germany and Austria, while the highest number by volume are in the Nordics, US and the UK/Ireland.
Mr Saa confirmed that new signatories include some of Asia’s big asset owners such as Japan Post Insurance, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Ping An Insurance Group (China) and the Employee Provident Fund (Malaysia).
