"The Arrived Future": New Guidelines for Pension Funds

(21 Nov '07)

Dutch Press release available here

VB, OPF and UvB, the three Dutch umbrella organisations for pension providers, have presented a report outlining new guidelines for pension funds concerning ESG implementation to social affairs’ minister Piet Hein Donner in The Hague today. The report is the outcome of a 'practical commission' that was setup in April 2007 and chaired by Professor Harry Hummels from ECCE, to support pension funds in developping and implementing responsible investing policies.

The group commented it has learned from discussions about establishing a framework that contains a number of requirements derived from international codes and guidelines. As for the ultimate framework, decisions are left to the pension funds.  

The commission also proposes to deal with ESG issues through the creation of a platform, inspired by corporate governance platforms such as Eumedion. Much of the responsibility to handle such issues, however, rests with governments and corporations, as the report says.

The full report, entitled De Gearriveerde Toekomst (The Arrived Future) is available in Dutch (with appendices) .

Other sources for this topic: IPE.com, Dutch Financial Telegraph, Volkskrant, OPF.