Local Government Super (LGS) has won SuperRating’s Infinity award for leadership in sustainable and responsible investment for the fourth time.
The $9 billion fund now has more than $5 billion of members’ savings in sustainable and responsible investment strategies, including shares, private equity and direct property assets, the largest commitment of any super fund in Australia.
The Sustainable Australian Shares option in the fund has returned 20.87 per cent this financial year to May.
Peter Lambert, LGS chief executive officer, put part of the success of the option down to the fund’s early adoption of moving out of the mining industry, which as a sector has been underperforming this year.
“Winning the SuperRatings Infinity Award is great acknowledgement for the work we do,” Lambert said. “Winning the award again just provides us with more motivation to further improve the way we manage our environmental, social and governance risks right across our investment portfolio.”
He spoke of a virtuous circle of the board being keen to promote the ideals, the management willing to implement and the membership being broadly accepting of the strategy.
“It’s been to our advantage our membership is made up largely of local government employees as they are probably the closest to these sorts of issues. Many of them are involved in land and water management, waste management and stuff like that,” Lambert added.
LGS is the only superannuation fund that has won the Infinity Award four times since SuperRatings introduced the award in 2008, previously taking the top spot in 2014, 2012 and 2011.
The criteria for the Infinity Award encompass all aspects of a superannuation fund’s ability to support sustainable and responsible investment, including:
- Sustainability
- Risk management policies
- Initiatives and performance
- Member engagement and operations
- Engagement with service providers
- Asset allocation
- A general fund overview
This latest award follows on from LGS’ number one global ranking for the management of climate change in the Asset Owner’s Disclosure Project (AODP) earlier this year.
