To coincide with COP27’s Finance Day, the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) published their inaugural Paris Aligned Asset Owners (PAAO) progress report. The report, which includes 29 case studies, shows how asset owners are developing a range of strategies and approaches to fulfil the criteria set by the PAAO 10-point commitment (which is set out in the report).

The Avon Pension Fund is in the process of moving to a new AVC provider.

Aviva, our current AVC provider, will no longer accept new employer applications and we are therefore in the process of appointing a new AVC provider.

From 1 October 2022, we will temporarily suspend new applications to any of the existing Aviva AVC schemes. As soon as we have appointed a new provider, new AVC applications will commence again with the new provider. This is likely to be from December. Deductions in respect of existing AVC contracts with Aviva will continue during this interim period.

In April, Avon Pension Fund signed the 2022 annual ‘Global Investor Statement to Governments on the Climate Crisis’, alongside over 500 other investors managing nearly $39 trillion in AUM. This statement was made public on the IIGCC IIGCC website yesterday, ahead of COP27 in Egypt in November.

The Pensions Ombudsman (TPO) has published a factsheet on McCloud. The factsheet sets out TPO’s views on what affected members and schemes can do now and TPO’s present approach to dealing with McCloud complaints.

TPO’s general starting position is that it would not investigate McCloud complaints. This is because it acknowledges that the Government is taking steps to address the discrimination with retrospective effect. TPO will, however, carefully look at the facts of each case before deciding whether to investigate.

We’re pleased to sign The Pension Regulator’s pledge to combat pension scams and protect our members.

Pension scammers wreck lives and anyone can be a victim. As part of the pensions industry, we play a vital role in protecting members and helping to fight the scammers.

We're pleased to bring you our Statement of Compliance with the UK Stewardship Code covering the year 2020 to 31 March 2021. 

Councillor Paul Crossley, Chair of the Pension Committee, said this in recognition of this latest release:

We’re pleased to bring you our Annual Engagement Highlights for 2021, carried out by EOS Federated Hermes on behalf of Avon Pension Fund. The report outlines our engagement and voting ESG activity for 2021. 

At the end of 2021 we published our very first Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) report. Today, we’re pleased to publish our Climate Action Plan – outlining the four key pillars of disclosure taken from that report that will help us reach our goal of becoming a net-zero investor by 2050 or earlier.

Following the disclosures set out by the TCFD is not yet compulsory for LGPS funds, so we are proud to be blazing the trail in this way.

As the worrying situation in Ukraine continues to unfold, we wanted to bring you a joint statement from the Chair of the Avon Pension Fund Committee – Councillor Paul Crossley, and the Chair of the Avon Pension Fund Investment Panel – Councillor Shaun Stephenson-McGall.

“As a leader in the field of responsible investment and where social factors, specifically human rights, form a key pillar of our responsible investment principles, we were shocked to learn of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and we are naturally concerned about the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the region.

In 2018, a court ruled that pension schemes must ‘equalise’ the Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) benefits for men and women. Currently, they are linked to the old state pension ages of 60 (for women) and 65 (for men).

GMPs are intended to be paid from the old state pension ages for men and women alike, (their ‘GMP age’), however they are not paid as well as a pension. This is because it is already included within the make-up of the pension. That said, the different starting ages for men and women can, in some instances, create inequality.