UK - Shareholder pressure group UK Socially Responsible Investment Forum (UKSIF) has named the three pension funds that have the most socially responsible investments in the UK's pension arena.

UKSIF today named the BT Pension Scheme, the UK's largest at £33bn (€47.7bn), the £824m scheme of insurance group Friends Provident and the £1bn Scottish Stagecoach Group's fund as Britain's top three.

In its survey UKSIF considered the responsible investment practices of pension funds of UK companies listed in the FTSE4Good UK Index and in the Carbon Disclosure Project's Climate Disclosure Leadership Index.

However, the study, in which 33 pension funds participated, found that a social responsible corporate sponsor did not necessarily result in a social responsible pension fund.

Just over a quarter of participating funds had not implemented a responsible investment policy, according to UKSIF.

Where a responsible investment policy had been adopted, it was almost always applied to equities. With other asset classes the policy was applied in about half of the cases, said UKSIF.

Some three quarters of respondents said they monitored whether the policy was being carried out, while two thirds said that responsible investments "featured in the assessment, appointment, evaluation or remuneration of fund managers".

Nonetheless, "two out of three corporate pension funds of corporate social responsible leaders have trustees who believe that environmental, social and governance issues can have a material impact on the fund's investments in the long term," UKSIF said.

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