Strategic Vision

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 39

• 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:

In 2023 the Fund has:

• 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

The Fund aims at managing non-investment risks by ensuring it is compliant with the regulatory framework and by implementing internal controls

Achievements:

• 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. Complementarily, the Fund continues to enforce Information security requirements for key suppliers and applications. Projects to secure Member-Self Service portals and transactions with the introduction of multi-factor authentication (MFA) and cyber insurance are well underway.

• 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:

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Achievements:

• The Fund continued to maintain 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 systems

• During 2023, the Fund 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 successfully moved to a new infrastructure as a service provider and focused on ensuring the resilience of critical service providers

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