Issue - meetings

Governance and Policy Update

Meeting: 25/04/2023 - Warwickshire Local Pension Board (Item 4)

4 Governance and Policy Update pdf icon PDF 139 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The item was introduced by Martin Griffiths (Technical Specialist, Pension Fund Policy and Governance), who outlined the governance issues affecting the Fund. Regarding the risk register there were three issues that had been identified as presenting a severe level of risk. These were climate change, long-term market risk, and cyber security. The Fund was doing as much work as it could to mitigate against each of these identified risks, whilst acknowledging that climate change was a global issue.

 

Martin Griffiths said there was a revised climate risk policy, which had been created by Hymans Robertson. The risk management, training, and bribery and fraud policies, as well as the internal dispute resolution procedure, had all been reviewed and the Funding Strategy Statement had been made available to view online. Results from the Hymans Robertson knowledge and skills assessment had been released. The training schedule had been updated accordingly and Board members would be kept informed of upcoming training events.

 

Members were told there had been a delay to the Single Code of Practice and an update was unlikely to be available until early June. Martin Griffiths said officers were working to fill the vacancy on the Board following Alan Kidner’s resignation. Martin Griffiths echoed the Chair’s earlier comments thanking Alan Kidner for his years of service on the Board. Jeff Carruthers said he would be willing to switch back to being a Scheme Member representative if this helped facilitate filling the vacancy. Andy Felton said consideration was being given to increasing the Board’s diversity as part of the recruitment process.

 

Responding to a question raised by Councillor Shenton regarding reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Victoria Moffett (Lead Commissioner, Pensions and Investment) said the Fund was working with a firm called GHGSat to monitor emissions being made by companies with which the Fund held investments. Companies needed to state what their plans were to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, although it was accepted that in some instances there may be a spike in emissions before they started to reduce. The Fund and others that had stewardship responsibilities, such as Border to Coast, could, as a last resort, divest from companies that were not demonstrating their commitment to reducing emissions. However engagement with such companies was viewed as a preferred option.

 

Martin Griffiths said online scams were the most likely cyber security risk that the Fund would be presented with, as this could potentially lead to ransomware demands. This had affected other local authorities but it was not clear how these issues had been resolved.