Singapore, 30 Nov 2020 – GIC today announces it has become a signatory to three organizations and initiatives charged with climate change management: CDP, Climate Action 100+, and the Asia Investor Group on Climate Change (AIGCC), as part of our sustainability strategy to increase engagement and disclosures on climate risks and opportunities.

As Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC invests to preserve and enhance the long-term international purchasing power of the reserves placed under our management. Founded in 1981 to secure the country’s financial future, sustainability is core to GIC’s mandate and investment strategy. We believe that companies with stronger sustainability practices will deliver better risk-adjusted returns over the long term, and that this relationship will strengthen over time.

Signing up to Climate Action 100+ and AIGCC signals GIC’s more active engagement with portfolio companies on climate risks and opportunities. “Climate change is one of the defining issues of our era. As a long-term investor, we seek to ensure our portfolio companies are aligned with the transition to a more sustainable path. Where we identify companies exposed to greater physical or transition risks arising from climate change, we engage with those companies to discuss, and offer support for, their plans to mitigate or transition from those risks,” said Ms Liew Tzu Mi, Chief Investment Officer for Fixed Income and Chair of GIC’s Sustainability Committee. Tzu Mi is also a member of the Group Executive Committee, GIC’s highest management body.

GIC’s Sustainability Committee was formalised in 2016 and is tasked to implement the organization’s sustainability framework, support and promote sound stewardship, and monitor and respond to emerging sustainability issues. In February 2020, GIC became a supporter of the efforts by the Financial Stability Board-Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) to develop an internationally accepted framework on climate reporting.

On CDP, Tzu Mi noted that the organization plays an important role in driving greater disclosures on the business risks and opportunities presented by climate change. Its disclosure framework is based on TCFD recommendations which provides companies with clear guidance on the material environmental metrics they should measure, monitor, and disclose. Its database of disclosures by companies and cities provides investors with consistent, timely, and financially relevant climate change-related metrics. Taken together, these tools help to enhance the focus and quality of investors’ dialogues with companies on their climate risk mitigation measures.

“We believe that investors can benefit from having access to high quality and consistent carbon emissions and climate-risk data on their portfolio. GIC is already a supporter of TCFD. We support CDP’s efforts to further encourage TCFD-aligned climate risk disclosures by companies on its global reporting platform,” said Tzu Mi.

To read GIC’s approach to sustainability, please click here.