The “Corporate Governance” category aims to identify best practice MPF Trustees with a robust governance framework, infrastructure, and an operating model.  The process examines the critical functions of the board’s role, responsibility and compensation, risk culture, people, and talents, processes, and technologies while maintaining a diverse board of directors.

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The submission includes the qualities below:

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• The risk management and culture of your organization

• Senior executives’ code of ethics, audit committee independence, Chairman, CEO Board separation, board diversity policy, etc…

• The Board Diversity Policy and your firm’s commitment to a diverse board

• Relevant committees and their policies and practices

• Your firm’s principles for managing both internal and external stakeholders’ interests

• Your CRO and CCO’s reporting protocol 

This award  highlights the responsibilities that MPF trustees, as asset owners, have in helping to shape the world we live in.”  This award is given to the Trustees that embrace Responsible Investing and practice Active Ownership and integrate ESG into their ownership policies and practices while driving positive real-world goals.

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Apart from illustrating their collaborative engagement initiatives with the underlying investment managers, they prioritize outcomes at the society/economy-wide scales, such as addressing climate change and corruption, rather than purely focusing on pure risks and returns of the holdings in the portfolio.

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Judges will be looking for qualities in:

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• the foundation of the practical stewardship principles and sustainability issues identification

• ongoing development and implementation of the responsible investment strategies and policies

• monitoring and assessment techniques of the investment managers and  investee companies

• the collaboration goals and engagement principles with the investment managers

• how voting rights are exercised by the investment managers

• how ESG is promoted as long-term value creation

• level of transparency, disclosure, and reporting

Multiple funds of the underlying investment managers will be drawn randomly from BlueOnion* to demonstrate the walking the talks of the fund houses’ ESG, GC, and Temperature performances against their peers.

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*BlueOnion is Benchmark’s disruptive fund research platform hosting over 290,000 funds with sustainability data, including ESG, Global Compact (GC), and Temperature Score in 67 countries.

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www.blueonion.today

This Award recognizes an in-house team of an MPF Trustee that has demonstrated achievements in the following Service Levels and achievements: 

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The submission criteria include qualities below:

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• Online Support: Whether the provider offers a streamlined onboarding process for new employee enrollment, whether forms are easily accessible, switching of funds is enabled, and the submission process is well organized through website and app access. 

• Putting the Members First: Whether the process puts its end customers’ needs first and whether it has a structured approval process to ensure end customers’ satisfaction through tracking and improvements of end-customer satisfaction rates, customer retention rates, response time, and ability to provide accurate, precise and usable information.

• Empowerment of Members: Whether there are tools to enable customers to do things themselves and become more engaged in the process – tracking their existing portfolio holdings, researching new investment opportunities, and comparing with other investments outside of the company’s.

• Communication and Reporting: The portal/statement provides an interactive portfolio overview, performance, and risk figures accompanied by the company’s commentaries and messages.

• Measuring Success: What are the key indicators used to measure client satisfaction, and what are the mechanisms for collecting and measuring end customers’ feedback

• ECA Effort: Whether the team and process are robust enough to provide timely service to clients who actively utilize the benefits of ECA to manage their retirement account, and whether there is a mechanism to detect unusual and unethical behavior.

• DIS Implementation: What are the proactive initiatives taken to educate the members on the implementation of DIS and whether a fair approach has been taken to inform the members of its pros and cons, and what factors they should consider when contemplating such strategies.