Railpen, the investment manager of the British Transport Police Force Superannuation Fund (BTPFSF), helps members get to grips with how their pension is managed and invested with a new member-focused report.

The 2022 Sustainable Ownership Review has been written purely for members. This is because we know that many of our members care about how their pension is managed. We also know that they have high expectations about where it’s invested and trust Railpen to do a good job when it comes to choosing where to invest.

There’s an appetite among members to know more about the investment decisions we make and our reasons for choosing to invest or disinvest in a particular company. We realise that the complexity of sustainable ownership remains a barrier for many members to fully understand the bigger picture. This is why we’ve developed our second Sustainable Ownership Review.

Written for members, with their help

Member feedback is extremely important to us and we like to incorporate it in our approach wherever possible. This is why we’ve taken into account feedback received by members of the railways pension schemes.

To support in writing the report, Railpen surveyed members and held focus groups to really understand what would be of most use to them and how they want to be communicated with on sustainable ownership matters.

The 2022 Review provides a comprehensive but straightforward information written in a clear and easy-to-understand way. It is short and snappy, and offers an ample spread of what Railpen has managed to achieve on members’ behalf throughout 2022.

What our members are telling us

As with the previous issue of the report (2021 Sustainable Ownership Member Review), when surveyed last year members said the top 3 priorities for them were fair treatment of workers, climate change and fair pay. You also said that governance (how well a company is managed) is really important to you.

To help illustrate some of the work we’ve done in 2022 to address those issues, we’ve provided case studies in the Sustainable Ownership Member Review on pages 10-14.

In terms of how you like us to communicate with you, you said that you want us to continue to use real examples of our work, are interested in the link between what we do on sustainable ownership and how it improves financial outcomes for you as scheme members, want more explanation on the numbers and outcomes we talk about in our reports and want to hear from us more often.

We will continue to take into account your views and feedback and to incorporate it into working practices and the products we develop for you going forward.

How we address members’ top issues and influence positive change

We use different engagement methods when trying to influence for positive change at a company. This is evident from our work with NextEra Energy Inc. one of the largest US based utility companies. We wanted NextEra to provide more detailed information on its approach to engaging with policymakers on climate change. We spoke to the company individually, and also used the ownership rights we get as shareholders together with other likeminded investors. After our efforts, NextEra committed to publishing more information on its policy engagement. You can read our case study 'NextEra Energy – working together to make a difference on climate change' on page 11 of the 2022 Member Review. 

We also talk about corporate governance* a lot at Railpen and have a process to exclude companies from our portfolio where we identify governance and behaviour concerns. As part of this process, in 2019 we excluded the Japanese optics and medical devices manufacturer Olympus because of concerns about their governance practices. In 2022, following continued engagement, we were pleased to remove the company from our exclusion list as a result of improvements to their board and committee structure. You can read more about the concerns we had and how we addressed them with Olympus on page 13 of the 2022 Member Review.

Our positive work on workforce and worker voice issues (page 10 in the 2022 Member Review) – one of our members’ top concerns – continued in 2022.  We also focussed our attention on the topic of fair pay and our Member Review provides a case study, which you can read on page 12, as to how we voted against a company’s’ remuneration approach where executive pay was out of line with how the rest of the employees are rewarded. If you would like to find out more about our voting work, give our Voting for positive change blog a read. For a more in depth overview of our voting principles, check out our Global Voting Policy Policy.

How we’ll continue to communicate with members on the topics important to them

Our ultimate aim  to achieve a two-way dialogue with members where they feel empowered to ask questions and to challenge us in our thinking remains the same.

We will continue our efforts to show members that we want and need to hear from them so we can make more customer-informed decisions our investment approach and communications. We will do this through various touchpoints we have planned in for the coming months. The next available opportunity will be in January 2024 when we’ll hold some roundtables with a selected cohort of our members. We’ll use this opportunity to dive deeper in their perceptions of our work on sustainable ownership through thought-provoking and engaging conversations. We’ll also look to understand whether the top 3 issues they’ve highlighted previously remain the same or something else has struck them recently.  If you have some time to spare and would like to get involved with helping us shape our future sustainable ownership priorities, email us at so@railpen.com so we can keep you informed of upcoming member events and feedback gathering initiatives.   

We welcome all your questions or feedback on the 2022 Member Review and on any other sustainable ownership-related publication or topic. Please let us know what you think at so@railpen.com

* Good corporate governance is when a company is run by an expert, diverse group of people and is supported by effective systems and processes. This means a company is more likely to be able to thrive over the long-term.