Earlier this month in Riyadh, during the 7th Annual One Planet Sovereign Wealth Funds (OPSWF) Summit, Global SWF recognized the excellence of New Zealand Superannuation Fund (“NZ Super”) around governance, sustainability and resilience (GSR) practices.
The scoreboard was first introduced by Global SWF in 2020 to jointly address important aspects such as transparency and accountability, impact and responsible investing, and legitimacy and long-term survival. Five years later, the system is embraced as a key metric among sovereign and pension funds globally.
The system is designed to be fully independent (we are not commissioned by anyone to do it), quantifiable (assessing progress over time), and objective (based only on publicly available information). The scoring is based on 25 different elements: 10 related to governance, 10 to sustainability, and five to resilience, which are answered binarily (Yes / No) with equal weight and then converted into percentage points.
The 2024 edition introduced three new elements seeking (i) exclusion lists or engagement policies; (ii) adherence to best practice frameworks such as TCFD or SASB; and (iii) commitment to net-zero goals. Five funds got top marks: Canada’s CDPQ and BCI, Ireland’s ISIF, Singapore’s Temasek, and NZ Super.
The latter is usually cited as an example of best practices globally, with strong governance (it maintains double-arm’s length independence from government); sustainability (it reduced its carbon footprint by 60% as measured by emissions intensity); and resilience (government withdrawals will only start in 2035/36).
The GSR’24 award was finally handed to John Williamson (Chair of the Guardians) and Anne-Maree O’Connor (Head of Sustainable Investment) by Diego Lopez (founder and MD of Global SWF). The Global SWF team will start the 2025 exercise in February 2025, and the preliminary results will be communicated to all 200 State-Owned Investors by May 1, 2025.
