The Danish commercial pension fund has so far made impact investments mostly in Denmark and its vicinity, according to CIO Anders Stensbøl, speaking at the GIIN Impact Forum in Amsterdam.
The Danish pension fund Velliv wants to move the focus of its impact investments from Denmark and its vicinity towards the Global South. The DKK270bn (€36.2bn) pensions firm also wants to find more investments related to nature and biodiversity, according to CIO Anders Stensbøl.
“Up until now, we have mostly focused on creating impact in the backyard of our customers, but now we should look more at the Global South rather than the vicinity of Denmark,” Stensbøl said during a panel debate at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) conference in Amsterdam on Wednesday.
Stensbøl also proved critical of ESG and impact investors who take the divestment route, for example by selling all their fossil fuel holdings. “You can’t divest your way into a greener future. You have to make some positive impact too,” he said.
Velliv, which recently revamped its impact investment product, also aims to increase its investments in nature and biodiversity, Stensbøl added, admitting however that this is not an easy task. “We are a commercial pension fund so we have to make sure we do not sacrifice any returns. But the difficult part with investing in nature and biodiversity is linking this to financial returns, so we need to spend a lot of time on this,” he said.
Alfred Slager, a non-executive board member at €533bn Dutch civil service scheme ABP who was also speaking at the panel, also said his fund wants to increase its focus on climate and biodiversity investments.
“While we don’t have the ambition to become an impact shop, impact investing is a primary portfolio strategy for us. And we find these topics [climate and biodiversity] are the most important ones impacting the portfolio and also the easiest to influence,” he said.
In March this year, ABP announced its intention to invest €30bn into impact investments within the next six years, of which over €11bn will be spread across climate and biodiversity solutions.
