Stockholm (NordSIP) – Nordea Life & Pensions Sweden is to reallocate SEK 7 billion to sustainable assets within 100 days as part of its sponsorship of the Climb for Climate initiative, a challenge being undertaken to raise awareness about the impact of climate change on alpine environments.
Climb for Climate is founded by Peter Sandahl, Nordea Investment Solutions & Advisory Centre Head of Strategy & Insight, and his mountaineering partner Danny Uhlmann. The men will attempt to climb all 82 summits over 4,000 metres in the European Alps within 100 days.
Nordea Life & Pensions Sweden has already begun reallocating SEK 7 billion of its global equities in traditional pension portfolios to sustainable investments, with the objective of finishing the allocation before the mountaineers reach the final summit.
Sustainable Finance is co-sponsoring the initiative. “We thought this was a perfect opportunity to visualise what we can all do to make a difference,” said Managing Director Johan Nystedt. “We will now make sure that pensions savings for more than 300,000 customers become more climate friendly.”
Nordea has concluded from its surveys that most of its customers want their pension savings invested in ‘environmentally friendly assets’, and thus strives to continuously improve the environmental profile of its pension products.
“I can only imagine how hard it must be to climb 82 peaks in 100 days, so I will not compare our effort to that of Peter and Danny. But what we are doing is a huge task as well as a huge responsibility. We are doing this because we believe it will give our customers better returns in the long run,” Nystedt said.
“We will push on with our task of reallocating the SEK 7 billion as fast as we can, regardless of how many summits the Climb for Climate team reaches during the expedition,”
Nystedt concedes that it is still too early to calculate the actual environmental gain of the reallocation. “We will get back to that when we have come a bit further, but it will be substantial,” Nysted promised.
Progress on the Climb for Climate expedition can be followed here.
Image © Stockphoto-graf – Shutterstock
