Eliciting Pension Beneficiaries’ Sustainability Preferences: Why and How?

Résumé

We explore whether beneficiaries of pension plans should have a voice in the fund’s sustainable investments. We hypothesize that the answer to this question depends on a fund’s legal and societal contexts, benchmarking pressure, and fund-specific factors such as the fund’s size and the board’s composition. We uncover heterogeneity in the degree to which beneficiaries are involved in decision-making. Some pension funds have started a dialogue with their participants, mainly using survey instruments. We provide an example of a fund that gave its participants a real vote, while avoiding the pitfalls that come with hypothetical surveys on individual preferences.

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Référence

Rob Bauer (Maastricht University), « Eliciting Pension Beneficiaries’ Sustainability Preferences: Why and How? », 2nd Sustainable Finance Center Conference, TSE, Toulouse, 2021.