The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is inviting pension funds and insurance firms to join two new stakeholder groups, in a bid to gather industry expertise for its policy work on long-term and infrastructure investment.

In a statement, the OECD said it had been engaged in policy work on infrastructure and how to address the investment gap.

The Paris-headquartered organisation said that in order to bolster its engagement with stakeholders in the infrastructure sector, it was planning to have “structured and routine dialogues with each stakeholder group, and to call on their expertise to ensure the policy work being developed responds to the real world developments in the sector.”

The OECD said its Task Force on Long-term Investment Financing was heavily engaged in the G20 Infrastructure Working Group (IWG), and had been delivering reports every year.

“The Stakeholder Engagement Group will create a conduit for stakeholders to become involved in G20 IWG work that the OECD is developing and contribute where relevant,” the organisation said.

The plan is to create two stakeholder groups to start with – one consisting of pension funds, including public pension reserve funds, and the other composed of insurance company representatives.

“The OECD has been carrying out the Survey of Large Pension Fund and Public Pension Reserve Funds (LPFS) since 2011, and to improve this data collection as well as to be better informed about the developments related to sustainable investment and the SDGs, we would like to have direct dialogues with the institutional investors,” the organisation said.

It said it was hoping to extend the LPFS to insurers in order to have a more complete picture of the institutional investors’ universe starting with 2021 data.

The OECD said it would call on known pension fund and insurer contacts, as well as associations or groupings of respective stakeholder groups to invite them to these stakeholder groups, but would welcome any pension fund – or public pension reserve funds – or insurer that was interested in joining the groups.

“We hope to hold bi-annual gatherings over Zoom to solicit comments and inputs on the various work streams that are being developed,” it said.

Those interested in joining are being asked to contact Mamiko Yokoi-Arai of the OECD Task Force on Long-term Investment Financing Secretariat by 22 December.

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