Taiwan pension supervisor BLF ups climate investments

Taiwan’s Bureau of Labor Funds (BLF) is following in the footsteps of global peers by increasing low-carbon investments with the launches of more climate change mandates, according to Yu-Ching Su, director general of the pension and annuity fund supervisor.

Speaking at an investment forum organised by Asia Asset Management in Taipei on October 22, Su noted that global pension funds are dialing up climate change-related investments.

Funds such as the California State Teachers Retirement System or CalSTRS are planning to substantially raise allocation to low-carbon investments in the longer run. “The BLF is following this trend,” Su said.

One example is the BLF’s tender in 2022 for a mandate tracking the Paris Agreement on climate change, a first for the pension supervisor. “We will continue to launch more climate change-related strategies and mandates,” she said.

Meanwhile, the BLF’s outsourced asset managers and its internal investment teams have both delivered “strong” investment returns thus far this year, according to Su.

The eight pension and annuity funds supervised by the BLF earned an investment return of 14.32% in the first eight months of 2024.

“We’ve leveraged on the expertise of the 60 outsourced international and local asset managers,” Su said, adding that the managers oversee almost half the NT$7.4 trillion (US$231 billion) of total assets under the eight funds.

In September, the BLF called bids for a $1.6 billion global sustainable real estate security mandate for the Labor Pension Fund, Taiwan’s largest defined-contribution scheme.

According to Su, the tender marks the pension supervisor’s “engagement in dynamic rebalancing and portfolio diversification” in the fast-changing global financial market environment.

Despite the domestic stock market rally this year, she emphasised that the BLF will stay focused on delivering stable long-term returns through diversified allocations across stocks, bonds and alternatives.