Milestones

Our goal is to foster a culture of respect in the Fund to ensure that professional dialogue is conducted and encouraged in all the decisions. 

For 2024, the Fund aims to:

• Strengthen the Fund's culture, building on the results of the 2024 Leadership Culture Assessment to track progress and identify new areas of focus.
• Improve organizational capacity, culture, through staff engagement.
• The implementation of culture transformation initiatives will continue with a focus on promoting organizational values and priorities.
• Increase collaboration, innovation and internal and external partnering.

The fund aims at ensuring client satisfaction through improved services, simplified interactions, and clear communication with participants, retirees, and beneficiaries . To this end the Fund will:

• Improve interaction with participants, retirees and beneficiaries, as well as member organizations. For the Fund’s clients, this will include the implementation of a new client service delivery model, including the new customer relationship management system, adopted in November 2021, which will improve responsiveness in handling queries. 
• Continue to map its processes to drive greater efficiency, including robotic process automation pilot projects.
•  The fund aims at Improving services and simplify interactions with clients through:
  •  implementing a comprehensive Client Service Delivery Model, a Client Relationship Management (CRM) system.
  • Collecting client feedback and insight through enhanced client survey.
  •  Organizing an annual townhall for all participants, retirees, and beneficiaries.

Our goal is to improve the UNJSPF's sustainability profile and position it as a leader in sustainable investing while optimizing returns. We also aim at reducing the environmental impact of the Fund’s operations and commit toward the targets set by the UN Secretariat Climate Action Plan. 

We will achieve this by:  

• Expanding the mechanisms for integrating ESG factors in investment decision process 
• Maintaining or improving our rating of the PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment) Score Report 
• Achieving the Net-Zero goals guided by the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance's directives. 
• Investing with impact according to our policy, as requested by the General Assembly and explore further impact investing opportunities.
• Continue to publish information related to its climate-related risks and opportunities by following the IFRS S2 guidelines, which effectively replaces the TCFD reporting framework.

Our goal is to continue to continue enhancing our best practices for managing non-investment risks and ensuring that the Fund has the adequate resources and processes in place to set up a strong framework for risk management by achieving the following:

Risks derived from inflation and geopolitical crises: The Fund will continue to monitor possible financial and operational impacts of the high inflation environment; and take prompt action to mitigate potential risks derived from inflation and geopolitical crises. 

Business Transformation: For 2024, the introduction of the new Customer Relationship Management system will pave the way for further organizational and process changes and enhanced internal controls to adopt more self-service-based, electronic, and paperless processes and upgrade aging systems to improve client experience and increase efficiency. The Fund’s Investment Section will advance in the implementation of the strategic roadmap and related projects to ensure strategic investment alignment, promote a risk-taking culture, and develop organizational agility.

Organizational Culture:  The implementation of culture transformation initiatives will continue with a focus on promoting organizational values and priorities. For 2024, the Fund aims to strengthen the Fund's culture, building on the results of the 2024 Leadership Culture Assessment to track progress and identify new areas of focus. 

Cybersecurity risk: the Fund will continue the Fund to enforce Information security requirements for key suppliers and applications.

Business Continuity Management: the Fund will continue to enhance its business continuity arrangements and monitor supplier viability, to strengthen its ability to maintain its critical business services during and following disruptive events.

Data Governance: the Fund will further align the Fund’s Data Strategy with the vision of the United Nations Secretary-General and with guidance issued by the United Nations on data protection and privacy. 

Sustainability Risks: From 2024, the Fund will report on climate-related risks and opportunities in line with the IFRS S2 guidelines.

Our primary goal is to ensure that the Fund can serve the needs and service expectations of our stakeholders efficiently and cost-effectively. In reaching this goal, we are working toward achieving the following secondary goals: 

• Innovate and leverage technology to improve services.
• Ensure that systems are operational 24/7.
• Make certain that the systems are operated within the rules of the Fund and applicable laws.
• Protect data and systems.
• Archive all data daily and store the data securely off-site for a minimum of five years.
• Take advantage of new technology to enhance the overall service delivery of the Fund.
• The digital capture of pension forms in member self-service, the Fund’s digital portal, is expected to dramatically simplify filling pension forms online.
• The deployment of signature recognition will reduce manual tasks and improve control accuracy when receiving forms, specifically the annual certificate of entitlement.
• Plan, implement and integrate the Fund’s future core systems.
•  Expand on the digitalization of processes within the Fund.
•  Keep pace with industry standards on cybersecurity.
• Expand and embed Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) in the fund.
• Continue to enhance its business continuity arrangements and monitor supplier viability, to strengthen the Fund’s ability to maintain its critical business services during and following disruptive events.
• Migrate to fully production IT Service Management (ITSM) platform and expand to Configuration Management, Change Management, Contract Management & Problem Management functions.

Our principal goal is to develop a new data management strategy to become a data-driven organization. To this end we will increase data literacy, integrate data management in decision making, and develop areas of data governance, data management and best practices, reporting and developing a center of data excellence.

We aim at:

• Having Critical data elements identified and actively managed for data quality.
• Initiating a data-cleansing and data reconciliation project.
• Having additional data work and the data governance operating model will allow further aligning the Fund’s Data Strategy with the vision of the United Nations Secretary-General and with guidance issued by the United Nations on data protection and privacy.
• Elevate the data governance framework by:
  • Enhancing coverage of core technology needs and rapid growth areas.
  • Ensuring data standards consistency across all units.
  • Improving communication and understanding of data governance principles.
  • Enhancing integration of core technology with data governance policy.

The Fund is committed to gender equality, inclusion and diversity. It also aims to achieve greater geographical representation across all positions. Over the past years, the Fund has also hired more staff members to strengthen capacity in the different teams to help support the Fund's growth, both in terms of pension administration and investment.   

The Fund has committed to:

• Develop training and strengthen partnerships with other UN agencies.
• Increase gender parity: progress towards achieving gender parity at each internationally recruited staff level making optimum use of vacancies filled during the reporting period.
• Achieve equitable geographical of staff member: the goal is to have at least fifty per cent of appointments on posts subject to geographical distribution that are from un- or under-represented Member States.
• Progress towards recruiting staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible for all posts making optimum use of vacancies.

Achievements: 

• As of 31 December 2023, the number of staff members in the Fund has reached 395.
• In 2023, the Fund reached 53 per cent female employees, 47 per cent male employees.
• As of 31 December 2023, the Fund employs staff members from 71 countries.
• Several staff groups were formed to advance the future of work, inclusion, decision-making and accountability, cross-team collaboration, communication, skill building and transformation, and innovation.
• Training sessions organized with other UN agencies, for data literacy, anti-racism conversation.
• In 2023, culture work has been focused on communication, collaboration, and transformation Complementarily, the Fund has largely fulfilled the objectives of the Human Resources Strategy 2021-2023; the training strategy and guidelines; and Gender Strategy, resulting in processes and principles to promote a more satisfied and skilled workforce and a gender sensitized work environment.

The Fund aims at providing excellent service to its clients and to simplify and digitalize interactions between the Fund and its clients.   

Achievements: 

• Outperformed its benchmark in pension processing, with more than 90% of initial pension cases processed within 15 business days.
• Continued to modernize its operations, further simplifying and digitalizing interactions with its clients. We are particularly proud that one of our flagship projects, the Digital Certificate of Entitlement (DCE) application, won the 2023 Government Blockchain Association’s (GBA) Social Impact Award.
• More than 25,500 digital certificates of entitlement were issued in 2023, representing more than 36 per cent of the eligible population of retirees and beneficiaries and an increase of more than 66 per cent compared with 2022.
• Response to client enquiries through the Contact Centre continues to be delivered against targets. The number of emails and calls received continues to grow as does our client base.
• Expanding the Contact Centre operations to 24 hours/five working days a week.

In 2023, the Fund’s objectives were to: 

• Expand the mechanisms for integrating ESG factors in investment decision process.
• Maintain or improve the rating of the PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment) Score Report.
• Achieve the Net-Zero goals guided by the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance's directives.
• Explore impact investing and devise a strategy accordingly  as requested by the General Assembly.

Achievements: 

• Published its second Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) report in 2023. This report outlined the progress made since the first report on the governance, strategy, risk management and metrics and targets related to climate that the Fund has adopted.
• The Fund developed a new integration strategy, an enhanced integration process and defined objectives, boosted private market ESG integration techniques and initiated a review of fixed income ESG processes.
• Issued an impact investing policy, which defines impact investing, governance structure, mandate (impact and return), themes, principles, and relevant frameworks as well as identified and submitted to the investment committee a compelling real estate net zero fund with a strong decarbonization focus.
• The Fund reached above its 40% carbon reduction target for equities, corporate bonds, and non-listed real estate portfolios.
• The Fund has also made progress in its engagement and financing of the transition efforts. Proxy vote rights were exercised in more than 99 percent of the meetings with votes and over 560 companies were engaged globally on 2,730 environmental, social, governance, strategy, risk and communication issues and objectives.

For 2023, the Fund has implemented a governance structure, management processes, and internal and external oversight mechanisms to adequately identify, assess, manage, monitor, and report the risks inherent to its operations. 

The Fund has also disclosed its non-investment risk factors (geopolitical risks, business transformation, culture, cybersecurity, business continuity management, data and sustainability) and risk governance and management practices in the Fund’s Statement of Internal Control annexed to the Financial Statements, which is available here.

Achievements:

Risks derived from inflation and geopolitical crises: the Fund started performing reverse stress testing to gauge inflation risk’s impact on Fund sustainability alongside scenario analysis, including climate scenarios. In addition, the Fund continues to diversify channels to distribute pension benefit payments, to offer new digital services to lower banking charges for beneficiaries located in countries impacted by disruptions in the international transaction system.

Business Transformation: The Fund has recognized that business transformation is required to prepare and respond to global and long-term structural challenges, and to generate better outcomes for internal and external clients. In 2023, the Fund’s Pension Administration continued to implement and extended the CARE (Client-focused, Action-oriented, Relations-builder, and Efficiency-driven) Strategy and related roadmap and projects, with a focus on integrating modern technologies and continuous improvement into business processes. In 2023, the introduction of new benefit payment channels, automated scanning and signature verification, and new functionalities in the Fund’s Digital Certificate of Entitlement provided enhanced service to In 2023, the Fund’s Investment Management section updated its Target Operating Model to define business and organizational transformation strategies aimed at achieving effective collaboration and standardized or seamlessly integrated business processes, data, technology, and communication.

Organizational Culture: Strengthening the Fund’s culture has been identified by management as key to the success of the Fund’s overall strategy. A Leadership Culture Assessment in line with the United Nations System Leadership Framework has been conducted annually since 2021 with the participation of a majority of UNJSPF staff to identify priorities for culture work. In 2023, culture work has been focused on communication, collaboration, and transformation. Complementarily, the Fund has largely fulfilled the objectives of the Human Resources Strategy 2021-2023; the training strategy and guidelines; and Gender Strategy, resulting in processes and principles to promote a more satisfied and skilled workforce and a gender sensitized work environment.

Cybersecurity risk: During 2023, the Fund continued to enhance its information security framework and processes to respond to emerging technologies and increasingly sophisticated threats, including disruptive capabilities of manipulated information and access to large-scale artificial intelligence models. The Fund continued to maintain the ISO27001:2022 Information Security Management System certification to ensure appropriate cyber risk controls are in place, and the delivery of mandatory training and awareness training to staff, including phishing campaigns. Third-party managed Security Operations Centers provide around-the-clock monitoring and incident management for security events, to ensure data assets remain protected.

Business Continuity Management: The Fund continued maintains a robust business continuity management governance framework with defined continuity plans and IT disaster recovery. The Fund has full remote working capability for all teams, to allow continuity of critical business functions and physical isolation of staff. Resilient data-center hosting arrangements are in place providing high availability for key ICT (Information and communication Technology) systems. During 2023, the Fund’s Pension Administration gradually moved ICT systems to the Cloud to enhance resilience and achieve further efficiencies, while focusing on crisis preparedness and crisis management for unexpected complex scenarios. In March 2023, the Fund’s Investment Section successfully moved to a new infrastructure as a service provider and focused on ensuring the resilience of critical service providers.

Data Governance: the Fund has undertaken projects to develop and implement a data governance framework as a key enabler to realizing the objective of becoming a data-driven organization.

Sustainability Risks: The Fund maintains a comprehensive sustainability framework and commits the targets set by the United Nations Secretariat Climate Action Plan. During 2023, the Fund expanded the mechanisms for integrating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors into investment decision-making and internal processes.

In 2023, the Fund provided the essential information technology resources and invested in technology. It continuously pursues and launches new information technology initiatives to strengthen the utilization of its tools. The Fund has also strengthened major projects including the digital certificate of entitlement detailed in the client management section below. 

Achievements: 

• The Fund successfully moved to a new infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider and decommissioned legacy infrastructure. Dedicated circuits and a fully established DR capability further enhanced the resilience of critical services.
• A new IT Service Management (ITSM) platform was deployed to parallel production, digitizing workflows for Service Requests and Incidents for the Investment Section of the Fund.
• Recertifications for ISO standards on Information Security & Business Continuity were obtained.
• IP telephony-based hardware was replaced by software enabled collaboration tools for Trader Turrets and staff phones.

The Fund’s objective is to achieve the Data Strategy of the Secretary General for Action by Everyone, Everywhere: With Insight, Impact and Integrity, aiming at building governance mechanisms and strategy oversight to manage data as a shared strategic asset (here).

Achievements:

• Establishment of a Data Council which meets quarterly, and a Data Stewards Group which meets monthly.
• Undertaken projects to develop and implement a data governance framework as a key enabler to realizing the objective of becoming a data-driven organization. Various components of the data governance framework are in place including a dedicated Data Governance Council, data inventory and data quality policy.
• Establishment of a Data Council which meets quarterly, and a Data Stewards Group which meets monthly, within the Investment Section of the Fund.
• Undertaken projects to develop and implement a data governance framework as a key enabler to realizing the objective of becoming a data-driven organization. Various components of the data governance framework are in place, within the Investment Section of the Fund, including a dedicated Data Governance Council, data inventory and data quality policy.