Railpen will publish its first-ever “structured engagement plans” as part of a rethink of its stewardship efforts, which will see it step up its focus on biodiversity and water.
The UK pension scheme today published a report about how it will use engagement and stewardship to achieve “systems change”.
The document outlines the work undertaken in 2025 to help Railpen understand where it can have the most influence on improving outcomes for its members.
That work included internal training “to help us undertake systemic diagnoses and identify where we can intervene most effectively”.
Over the past few weeks, Railpen has also trained some of its employees on public policy advocacy – an area it said it would allocate greater resources to going forward.
It will now produce a series of “engagement plans” that will map out “a more structured, outcomes-focused and comprehensive path for each of our priority themes”.
This will include the financial justification for each theme, as well as how it will approach company-level stewardship and which kinds of companies it will select for engagement to achieve the most impact.
“Over the next few months, we’ll publish high-level versions of each of these engagement plans, to be transparent to the market about our intentions and to support others who are working on their own approaches,” it explained.
While the top-level priorities will remain the same under Railpen’s 2026-2030 stewardship programme, the specifics will change as a result of new engagement realities.
“Underlying policy, political and industry developments have led us to reconsider how we can best achieve systems impact, including through a shift on our sub-thematic priorities – which we have prioritised in terms of what our systems change analysis indicated would most effectively support positive change on the top-level them,” stated the report.
Within the ‘nature and climate’ category, the fund will now focus on water and biodiversity, for example.“Climate change and nature loss are interconnected systemic risks, and further integrating nature considerations into our existing and longstanding climate stewardship strategy offers the potential for mutually reinforcing solutions,” said Caroline Escott, the pension fund’s head of investment stewardship and co-head of sustainable ownership.
“Our forthcoming engagement plan will demonstrate how research has shown an additional focus on nature sub-themes highlighted in the report will have the biggest system-wide impact.”
Railpen will also prioritise its work on the governance of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, board effectiveness, audits, and shareholder rights.
Under the umbrella of ‘Worth of the Workforce’, Railpen will pursue fair pay and better representation for workers at portfolio companies, as well as tackling modern slavery.
Starting this year, the fund’s Sustainable Ownership team will “begin to co-engage alongside” their colleagues in the human resources department, and will also bring in its auditing team when engaging with companies on the topic.
Railpen said it had a “particular interest” in UK-based companies, because 44% of its total assets are invested in the country, but will also prioritise the US.
Note: This article was corrected to reflect Railpen’s continued focus on climate change
