UN Pension Fund: Last year, an internal investment governance audit found conflicts of interest and said the Fund must transform its investment culture. How’s the Fund doing? 20 April 2021

 According to a February 25, 2021 article in Bloomberg,  Mark Carney, ”a leading figure behind this year’s global climate talks, walked back remarks claiming the half-trillion-dollar asset manager where he works [Brookfield] had neutralized pollution across its portfolio”.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-25/mark-carney-s-brookfield-net-zero-claim-confounds-climate-experts

 

The article explains that the controversy hinges on whether a company can claim a “net zero” status, i.e, that an investment in renewable energy avoided an investment in the same amount of fossil fuels. Climate experts called foul and Carney swiftly backtracked.

Brookfield and the Fund

Who’s Mark Carney and why should Fund members care? Carney is  UN Secretary-General António Guterres' Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/personnel-appointments/2019-12-01/secretary-general-appoints-mark-joseph-carney-of-canada-special-envoy-climate-action-and-finance. He’s also,  according to the Bloomberg article, adviser to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

 

Brookfield has a history with the UN Pension Fund. When former Director of Investments Herman Bril  co-edited a book on “Sustainable Investing” earlier this year, Carney wrote the foreword.https://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Investing-Herman-Bril/dp/0367367351

Reportedly,  Bril recused himself from a private market committee (PMC) meeting concerning Brookfield on August 26, 2020, claiming that he had only just found out that his friend, Mark Carney, intended to join Brookfield.

Pedro Guazo, appointed as Representative of the Secretary-General for Investments, and head of the Office of Investment Management (OIM) since the departure of Sudhir Rajkumar at the end of March 2020, reportedly requested an internal independent conflict of interest review of the incident by the Fund’s Risk and Compliance Unit.

UN Pension Fund: Open message: UNJSPF potential security breach: Publishing of personal data of UNJSPF Fund members by a third party, April 18, 2021

UPDATE: Exchange of emails with Rosemarie McClean, Chief Executive of Pension Administration, UNJSPF, about the potential security breach related to the publishing on Facebook of personal data of UNJSPF Fund members by a third party on April 18, 2021.

 

From: Loraine Rickard-Martin 

To: Rosemarie McClean 

Cc: Martha Helena Lopez, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti 
Date: Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: Open message: UNJSPF potential security breach: Publishing of personal data of UNJSPF Fund members by a third party

 

Dear Rosemarie,

 

Thank you for your response. I am gratified to note that the Fund will “do [its] utmost to make sure pension payments continue" for retirees lacking 2020 Certificates of Entitlement. However, you provide no assurance regarding my concern that given the particular communications and other challenges of Covid-19,  the Fund should “ on humanitarian grounds, refrain from any suspension of benefits until the situation of each retiree can be satisfactorily clarified.”

 

You imply, by stating that the Fund “look[s] to further strengthen the handling of personal data with the associations {FAFICS]”, that the Fund intends to continue sharing retirees’ personal data with an organization that has just been caught mishandling such data, at least for  “400 retirees and beneficiaries …published on a social network by a local retiree association”, according to this post on the Fund’s website dated 19 April:

https://www.unjspf.org/erroneous-publication-of-a-list-of-retirees-under-the-annual-certificate-of-entitlement-exercise/

 

The list of retirees' personal data that was published on Facebook, pertained to UNICEF retirees only. Your response does not allay the concern I raised in my message that data from “the UN and its funds, programmes and agencies in the same situation, were also similarly shared with FAFICS” and similarly mishandled. 

 

How can the Fund be confident that the mishandled data was confined to the 400 UNICEF retirees in question and that data of retirees from the UN or its funds and programmes, was not similarly mishandled by FAFICS? My experience with FAFICS, which is shared by many retirees, of whom the vast majority (75 per cent) are not members of FAFICS,  does not inspire confidence concerning any of its activities. 

 

While I appreciate your response, it also does not answer my stated concern about “specific steps [is] the Fund [is] taking to inform its members about the extent of the security breach”, information that the Fund clearly does not currently have, since its post of 19 April limits the security breach to a single case about which it is aware. Yet, it is undoubtedly the Fund's responsibility to perform its own due diligence and not rely on the word of any third party. Until that occurs, and with all good intentions, you will continue to be unable to address my concern about how the Fund intends to  “mitigate the risk of members’ data being compromised”.

 

With appreciation and regards,

Loraine

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UN Pension Fund: Message from UN participant representatives, 1 April 2021

Message from UN participant representatives: Important developments at the pension fund regarding governance, investments, safety, efficiency and payments 

 

 

BROADCAST United Nations 

Thursday, 01 April, 2021 10:12 AM

Dear Colleagues,

Version française ci-dessous

As your elected representatives on the UN Pension Board (the Board) we would like to update you on how we have been working to improve how your pension fund is led and governed, how pensions are paid, how your investments are kept more secure and the status of the Geneva office. 

This report includes important decisions of the UN General Assembly (A/RES/75/246) and a subsequent special board meeting on how your fund is governed.

We want your fund to be better governed and safer

We have been pushing to improve how our  fund is governed and led in order to make it more safe, responsive and efficient. We know that for many of us it is our only form of retirement income.

We have secured some important improvements, including:

• A complete change and restructuring of the fund’s leadership.
• A General Assembly instruction to prevent conflicts of interest by separating the board and its Secretary from the Chief Executive of Pension Administration whom the Board oversees.

 

But just as important is how the Board operates. It is supposed to act in your interest by holding the leadership to account and setting the fund’s strategy. But with 93 members and non-members meeting once a year, it has all the agility of a container ship stuck in the Suez Canal, and has struggled to fulfill its mandate.

 

This is why we believe in a more manageable 19 member board, meeting at least quarterly to be able to carry out core functions such as reviewing financial positions, acting on committee reports, meeting with management and making timely decisions (see our proposal at the bottom of this message). 

 

We also believe its composition should reflect the participation weights of each member organization so that your concerns are appropriately and democratically dealt with.

 

In support of this, the General Assembly commissioned reviews by OIOS and an independent consultancy called Mosaic. Both reviews broadly aligned themselves with our views.

 

However, to our frustration and that of the General Assembly, these efforts have faced dogged resistance from some in the Board. 

 

In December, the General Assembly asked the Board for “concrete reform proposals and plans” in line with best practices. Following a week-long meeting in February, the Board said it would continue to study various options. It neither committed to a smaller board nor a more democratic one. However we are continuing to push for positive change.

 

We want the fund to follow its rules

 

On a related matter, we are encouraged that the General Assembly has for the third time refused a request from the rest of the Board to remove the Fund from the legal purview of the UN Appeals Tribunal and place it in a legal vacuum. The Assembly has also delayed an amendment that would disenfranchise hundreds of participants from board membership.