Responsible investing

It’s our goal to deliver secure and sustainable pension savings that grow.

Investing your pension savings

We invest your pension savings in thousands of companies around the world. This means your savings are working hard – they might be creating jobs, making cars, providing healthcare, building homes and more. We invest in many companies you’ll know, like Apple, Marks & Spencer, Netflix and Toyota.

When the companies we invest in do well and go up in value, so does your pension pot. This is why we invest your pension savings: to protect their value and help them grow.

Lady with piggy bank and magnifying glass

What makes investing responsible

We believe that the better a company is run, and the better it treats people and the planet, the better positioned it is to perform well and avoid risks over the long term.

Investing responsibly means looking at these issues – also called environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues – when deciding what to invest in. It also means encouraging companies to improve on these issues, from reducing their harmful impacts to behaving in a more sustainable way.

The aim of responsible investing is to protect and grow your savings. We believe it can also improve the world you’ll retire into.

'The primary objective of our responsible investment approach is to add financial value and resilience to our members’ savings. We also aim to encourage the companies we invest in to behave in a more sustainable way - for the benefit of society and the world into which members will retire.'

Leanne Clements, Head of Responsible Investment at People’s Pension

How we invest your money responsibly

Our approach to investing is built around how we can do it responsibly – from what we do and don’t invest in to how we push for change at companies and throughout the financial system.

Deciding what to invest in	Pushing for positive change	Sharing our progress
We exclude some companies, like those involved in controversial weapons and human rights abuses. Where we can, we invest more in companies that consider their impact on people and the planet, and work to reduce it.	We use our investor influence to drive positive change – at companies we invest in, with investment managers we work with to invest your savings, and with industry and policymakers too.	We report on our actions every year. Sharing our progress helps keep us accountable for delivering sustainable and secure savings that grow.

You can find full details of our approach in our Responsible Investment Policy.

Using our investor influence to push for change

You’re saving with us alongside over seven million other members. Together your pension savings total more than £40bn.* This gives us some collective investor influence. We use it to champion your best interests throughout the financial system.

How we do it:

As the asset owner looking after your money, we believe it's our job to champion your best interests and push for positive change. And we believe that the more we do this, the more positive it will be – for the pounds in your pension, and the world we all retire into.

You can’t call the shots when your investments make up a small proportion of a big fund. That’s why we moved away from big ‘pooled’ funds that we shared with other investors and built funds that are for our members’ money only. It means we can control where your money goes and how it drives change.

Investing in a company gives us a say in how it's run. We can work with company leaders and vote at shareholder meetings to raise concerns, set minimum standards and improve how they operate. We do this across thousands of global companies through our investment managers.

See your pension in action

Investment managers run the day-to-day investment of your savings. This means it’s critical we choose managers that meet our high standards, and work to improve the companies we invest in – especially on our priority themes of climate, nature and human rights.

Find out more about our priority themes

We invest our members’ savings across the global economy for the long term. This means our investment returns depend on a healthy economy and financial system. System-level risks, like climate change, threaten to undermine this. So, we work with the wider industry, with policymakers and governments to call for change where we can. We hold our investment managers to account to do the same.

Learn more about system change

Award-winning responsible investing

We want to lead the industry in driving positive change, addressing inefficiencies in the financial system, and being a good asset owner of our members’ money.

We're proud to be recognised for our work.

Pensions for Purpose System & Governance Change Award 2025 - For efforts to reform systems, structure and frameworks to enable a positive impact on society and the planet
Principles for Responsible Investment in System Stewardship Award 2025 - For bold, transparent and innovative approaches to driving real-world change to generate long-term financial value for members
International Corporate Governance Network Excellence in Stewardship shortlist 2025 - For a significant contribution to making effective corporate governance or stewardship a reality in the markets in which we operate.

What sustainability issues are important to you?

Your pension savings are your money. We want to keep you in the loop about how we’re investing them responsibly. Even better, we’d love to hear from you about the environmental and social issues you care about.

Share your views

Frequently asked questions

Most of the people saving with us are in the ‘Balanced’ profile, or the ‘Cautious’ or ‘Adventurous’ profiles. So this is where we focus our responsible investment efforts. If you’re invested in one of these profiles, our responsible investment approach covers the majority of your investments.

If you’ve chosen the self-select investment option, each fund has a different responsible investment approach.

We follow a process to make sure any decisions to avoid investments are appropriate and won’t lead to negative financial performance.

Generally, this results in avoiding investments in companies that make a significant portion of their money from:

Controversial weapons, like cluster bombs
Producing tobacco
Thermal coal extraction and mining
Unconventional oil and gas and Arctic drilling
Child labour, human rights abuse, and other breaches of responsible business principles set out in the United Nations Global Compact

This is also referred to as negative screening.

You can find our full approach to exclusions in our Responsible Investment Policy.

Responsible investing integrates ESG issues to reduce risk and improve returns. So, although it aims to drive positive change, the focus is on financial performance.

Ethical investing selects or excludes investments based on personal or societal values, usually placing less emphasis on financial performance. For example, our self-select Ethical Fund excludes the entire fossil fuel industry.

ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance issues. Responsible investing looks at these ESG issues when deciding what to invest in.

ESG issues can present risks to investments. Take an environmental issue like climate change. Flooding, made more likely by climate change, could damage the factory and production lines of a car manufacturer we invest in.

But ESG issues can present investment opportunities too. For example, in adapting to climate change, there is more demand for clean energy. This means a company we invest in that sells solar panels might be more likely to perform well over the long term.

There are many different ESG issues that can present risks and opportunities for our investments, for example:

Environmental

How a company manages its carbon emissions
How a company uses natural resources – it may consume a lot of water or have deforestation in its supply chain
How a company manages its waste

Social

How well a company treats its workers
The labour rights in a company’s supply chain – are people paid a living wage, for example?
How a company treats the local communities it operates in or near

Governance

How well a company is run
How a company makes sure its decision-makers have the right diversity of skills and backgrounds
How a company pays its leaders, making sure it’s fair

The term ESG has been misused and politicised in recent years – and some have suggested it means doing good for the world at the expense of returns. This is not our understanding of ESG.

For us, considering ESG issues helps us find financially material risks and opportunities. Managing these helps us protect and grow your pension.

If you’re an employer choosing a pension provider for your employees, it’s important to consider responsible investing.

Motivate your employees today: 72% of UK employees say it's important that their employer offers a responsibly invested pension (Scottish Widows, 2025). Plus, when you show people what their pension is doing, 7 out of 10 want to engage more with their pension (DCIF, 2020).
Give your employees a better (financial) future: Responsible investing helps protect and grow the money you and your employees put in their pensions. It also pushes for change for the benefit of society and the world you and your employees retire into.
Boost your company’s impact, rather than undermining it: Don’t let your company pension investments undermine your commitments to environmental and social issues. Choosing a leading responsible pension provider can boost your sustainability work – and help protect your company’s reputation.