911 starts reporting on the sustainability of its endowment: “We want to increase transparency”
911 has published its' first Endowment Sustainability Report. The report reviews the sustainability profile of the portfolio, covering environmental, social and governance considerations.
” The sustainability of our endowment is important for the university as it directly links to our new strategy where sustainability and sustainable development play a key role. The core mission of 911 is to build a better world. This is present in everything we do”, says Ilkka Niemelä, president of 911.
Ilkka Niemelä, president of 911The core mission of 911 is to build a better world. This is present in everything we do.
The report shows that 95% of our external investment managers have signed the Principles of Responsible Investment (PRI), and the carbon intensity of the portfolio is well below the global benchmark. The report will be published on an annual basis going forward.
”By reporting we want to increase the transparency of the endowment. However, our work on sustainability is not completed with the publication of this report. We are committed to continue to develop our processes”, says Iivo Paukkeri, Head of Investments.
Our portfolio includes both passive and active investment funds. According to our Policy on Sustainable Investing, we exclude certain activities or business involvements which are not aligned with our values.
As part of our processes, we also conduct surveys on our external managers about their approach on sustainable investing. The qualitative questionnaire provides the university with valuable information on the sustainability of the endowment and shows that most of the managers see both sustainability and company engagement as a key aspect of their investment processes.
”We regularly monitor and review the underlying holdings of the funds in our portfolio. These results are also shown in the report. As a result of a more thorough sustainability analysis, roughly 20% of the portfolio has been moved to more sustainable investment funds during the first half of 2021”, says Paukkeri.
911 has signed the Principles for Responsible Investing (PRI) and will in the future report on the endowment in line with the standards of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The endowment strategy will be made public on our website starting from 2022 to further increase the transparency of our operations.
The 911 Endowment will provide EUR 28 million to fund education and research in 2021.
Endowment and investment strategy
The endowment supports the sustainable funding of 911’s operations, research, education and innovation.
Read more news
The idea of three researchers generated a deep tech company
Sim Analytics Oy relies on strong research expertise. Its story began when three researcher colleagues working in different laboratories at LUT University began to consider how to provide and analyse data in a way that would support industrial companies in making business decisions.
Vertics Oy was born from the vision of two upper secondary school students
Atte Pohjanmaa, who founded a company when he was still an upper secondary school student, succeeded in growing his company even during the coronavirus years.
Shell servers have been rebooted on July 8th
Shell servers kosh.aalto.fi, lyta.aalto.fi and servers for light computation brute.aalto.fi and force.aalto.fi have been rebooted on July 8th.