Stockholm (NordSIP) – Following an 18-month period of consultation with its signatories, the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) announced a new updated strategy plan on 6 August 2024. It presents the organisation’s reflections on almost two decades of activity while offering up a revised set of priorities for the coming period up to 2027.
The next 3 years will see the PRI focus on accelerating its members’ progress on responsible investment (RI), simplifying the mandatory reporting process, and ensuring RI is establishing itself within emerging economies as well as the developed markets. The organisation will maintain its contributions to collaborative engagement initiatives and efforts to positively influence policymakers.
Rather than take an annual snapshot of PRI members’ RI activities via the reporting and assessment process, the aim for 2025 is to encourage at least half of them onto new Progression Pathways, which involve a greater level of ongoing support from the PRI and adapting to each member’s specific objectives and regulatory environment. The streamlining of PRI’s thus far resource-intensive reporting process is intended to free up organisations’ capacity towards concrete steps on their respective Progression Pathways.
The updated PRI strategy aims to provide the impetus for $10-20 trillion worth of growth in the investor base’s assets under management. The PRI hopes to achieve a large part of this by gaining further traction in emerging markets. Although the organisation currently works with 640 emerging market signatories from 46 countries, it aims to reach its 2027 growth goal through a renewed focus on Southeast Asia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and India. The PRI is keen to collaborate with local sustainable investment forums (SIFs) and other relevant organisations to benefit from synergies and avoid duplicating efforts while promoting advanced RI practices.
Collaborative initiatives and policymaker influence
Several large collaborative ESG initiatives have experienced a turbulent period in recent years, with political pressure leading to major investors withdrawing and increasing doubts about the effectiveness of the engagement process. The PRI is involved in multiple collaborative initiatives, as the leading organisation in some cases or as a supporting entity in others. Given the ongoing difficulties it is telling that the new strategy prioritises the maintenance of signatory involvement rather than any growth targets over the period to 2027. However, the PRI is hoping to expand the number of companies targeted by the various initiatives, which include the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, the Net-Zero Asset Managers Initiative, the Net-Zero Investment Consultants Initiative, Climate Action 100+, and the Advance and Spring initiatives that target human rights and biodiversity issues respectively.
The PRI is also hoping to use its rapid growth over the past two decades to influence policymakers around the globe towards a better enabling environment for RI. This strength in membership numbers and assets under management can be combined with the PRI’s in-house expertise to encourage policymakers and regulators towards greater harmonisation of standards. The organisation aims to have established influential relationships with policymakers in 15 priority markets by 2027.
PRI signatories will be able to find out more about the orgainsation’s updated strategy at the forthcoming Signatory General Meeting 2024, which will take place in two online sessions on 10 September 2024 at 08:00 – 09:30 BST and 17:00 – 18:30 BST. Signatories are invited to email advance questions by 3 September and will be able to post questions live throughout the meeting.
