Oslo Pensjonsforsikring (OPF) and its subsidiary Oslo Forsikring are captive insurance companies providing pension, life and non-life insurance to the City of Oslo, affiliated companies and hospitals. OPF is mainly focused on covering its members’ defined benefit pension schemes. The group also sells group life insurance products and occupational injury insurance to the same client base. Oslo Forsikring insures buildings and vehicles owned by the municipality, including Oslo City Hall.
Pension insurance assets are allocated to liquid equities and pooled funds, investment grade loans and bonds, high yield bonds, private equity, real estate and infrastructure, hedge funds, money market and amortised cost loans and bonds. OPF manages an active international equity portfolio in-house that aims to have a higher risk-adjusted return than the global index through long-term holdings in listed companies from the OECD, EU, Hong Kong, and Singapore markets. It also invests in externally managed equity funds that can meet its requirements for the integration of climate risk and other criteria.
OPF takes its guidance from the Council on Ethics for the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) when it comes to responsible investment. The council publishes a list of companies that are excluded or under observation for potential violation of its norms and standards. There are also sector or product-based based exclusions of tobacco and cannabis producers as well as mining companies deriving 30% or more of their revenue from coal or producing more than 20 million tonnes of thermal coal per year. Energy companies deriving 30% or more of their revenue from coal-based power generation or that have coal-based power generation capacity of more than 10,000 MW are also excluded.
Norms-based exclusions focus on serious or systematic human rights violations, or violations of individual’s rights in situations of war or conflict. The council also avoids companies selling weapons to states engaged in armed conflict that use the weapons in ways that constitute serious and systematic violations of the international rules on the conduct of hostilities, or to states that are subject to investment restrictions on government bonds. Environmental exclusions include activities leading to severe environmental damage or acts or omissions that on an aggregate company level lead to unacceptable greenhouse gas emissions. Gross corruption or other serious financial crime or other particularly serious violations of fundamental ethical norms complete the list of exclusion criteria applied by the Council on Ethics and followed by OPF.
OPF reserves the right to invest in certain companies exclude by the Council on Ethics in cases where these exclusions are made for portfolio diversification reasons rather than ethical or sustainability norms and guidelines. In all cases OPF follows the recommendations of the Norwegian Corporate Governance Board (NCGB or Norsk utvalg for eierstyring og selskapsledelse NUES) when evaluating potential investee companies.
OPF seeks to work with external managers that can provide sufficient climate risk management and reporting, are properly regulated and that participate in the Common Reporting Standard on tax issues.
