This award is for an individual or institution that has made a meaningful contribution to advancing the understanding and/or practice of sustainable finance as it pertains to the mega-trend of climate change. This is about system-level stuff and should ideally have a practical element/output.

This award will celebrate an asset owner that can demonstrate integrating the energy transition across a wide range of asset classes. The entry should clarify the strategy, provide examples of energy transition investments (and/or engagement), set out how successful it has been and what potential changes are planned. Quantitative data about energy transition investments in different categories will also be needed.

This award is about authenticity and clarity of public communication to stakeholders about the asset owner’s net zero goals and progress towards those goals. The judges will pay close attention to clarity about the extent to which the contender’s goals go beyond its investment portfolio and if so, what the asset owner’s theory of change is. Discussions distinguishing between investors’ impact and companies’ impact will be valued and closely scrutinised. This could include communication about the investor’s views about boundaries: what can and can’t a company be responsible for versus an investor etc.

This award is focussed more on the strategy that a pension fund pursues in its approach to stewardship and how this shapes the campaigns that enable it to implement the strategy. The entry should display how the strategy is designed with clear targets and transparency in line with the pension fund’s long-term net zero and overall objectives. It should also highlight how it is designed to influence and shape the net zero and transition commitments of the companies that the pension fund invests in. Details about the use of available data and other benchmarks would strengthen the case.

This award is for a single pension fund investor or group of pension funds for an effort focussed on improving a particular company’s, group of companies’ or public sector actor’s performance on social and environmental matters, especially their net zero, transition and climate risk ambitions. This could cover a company’s operations and/or products or an initiative that succeeds in unlocking better reporting from a company. The entry for this award should explain the nature of the initiative, time scale, challenges and impact. Efforts/initiatives that can point to a wider/sectoral impact will be valued more highly.

This award will celebrate an asset owner that can demonstrate leadership in energy transition-related investments and/or engagement in the private markets. This can include examples of influencing deal structures, adding value to assets etc.

This award will celebrate an asset owner that can demonstrate leadership in energy transition-related investments and/or engagement in the public markets. This could include examples of making or shunning primary investments or engagement with companies. The judges will in particular look out for entries that demonstrate thoughtful integration of energy transition considerations vis-à-vis the fixed income markets.