UK – A great opportunity has been missed for Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) to take its place in the new stakeholder pensions arena – to become legally applicable next month, according to research commissioned by Friends Provident among 200 small to medium sized UK companies.

According to the research, a great deal of interest has been shown in SRI, despite a low level of awareness.

However, the report also finds that only 10% of respondents knew they had to have a statement of investment principles (SIP) for stakeholder schemes, which stipulate that companies have to disclose their position on SRI, even if investment strategies don’t include any.

About 25% of companies said that SRI would affect their choice of stakeholder provider, with some 44% saying it only had average importance.

Overall, 33% felt it was very, or fairly important for a provider to offer some form of SRI in their stakeholder schemes.


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