Achievements

2024 Non-Investment Goals
2023 Achievements

The Fund aimed at achieving the following in 2024 :

The C.A.R.E Strategy

An updated “C.A.R.E. Strategy for 2024 and Beyond” (Client-focused, Action-oriented, Relations-builder, and Efficiency-driven) was endorsed by the Pension Board at its 78th session (July 2024). The most recent report on the progress of the C.A.R.E strategy 2024 and beyond can be found here.

Strengthening our workforce

In addition to geographic diversity, the Fund strives to ensure gender diversity and inclusivity across gender and geographic representation amongst its staff at all levels in line with the United Nations-wide Strategy on Gender Parity, we also aim to provide meaningful opportunities for career growth. We strive to foster a culture of respect to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard.

For 2024, our related goals are to:

  • Strengthen the culture, building on the results of the 2023 Leadership Culture Assessment survey issued across the organization to track progress and prioritize areas of focus.
  • Implement culture-transformation initiatives, with a focus on promoting organizational values and priorities.
  • Increase collaboration, innovation and internal and external partnering.

Responsible Investment

Our goal is to position the Fund as a leader in responsible investment while maximizing returns. We also aim to reduce the environmental impact of the Fund’s own operations in line with the targets set by the United Nations Secretariat Climate Action Plan. 

We will achieve this by:  

  • Expanding the mechanisms for integrating Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into investment decision-making. 
  • Maintaining or improving our rating on the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) Score Report. 
  • Achieving the net-zero goals set by the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance's directives. 
  • Exploring impact investing opportunities and developing our impact policy, as requested by the General Assembly.
  • Publishing information related to climate-related risks and opportunities following the International Financial Reporting Standards Standard 2 (IFRS S2) guidelines which replace the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) reporting framework.

Risk Management

In 2024, we continued to ensure that the Fund has adequate resources and processes in place to follow best practices for risk management:

  • External Risks: The Fund will continue to monitor possible financial and operational impacts of a high inflation environment and take prompt action to mitigate potential risks derived from inflation and geopolitical crises.
  • Business Transformation: Introducing a new customer-relationship management system will pave the way for further organizational and process improvements. These changes and enhanced internal controls will support more self-service-based, electronic, and paperless processes and upgrading systems to improve client experience and increase efficiency. The Fund will also seek to ensure strategic alignment across its investments, promote a risk-taking culture and enhance organizational agility.
  • Organizational Culture: Culture initiatives will aim at promoting organizational values and priorities in line with the results of the 2023 Leadership Culture Assessment all-staff survey.
  • Cybersecurity: We will continue to enforce information security requirements for key suppliers and applications.
  • Business Continuity Management: The Fund will continue to manage business continuity and monitor supplier viability, to ensure critical business services remain operational during and following disruptive events.
  • Data Governance: The Fund will further align its 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: The Fund will report on climate-related risks and opportunities in line with the IFRS S2 guidelines.

Technology

Our primary goal is to serve the needs and service expectations of our stakeholders efficiently and cost-effectively. To this end, we plan to: 

  • Prepare for and mitigate potential disruptions to critical business services.
  • Migrate to a new IT service management platform that supports key functions such as change management, configuration management and contract management.
  • Further strengthen information security by implementing privileged account & access management.
  • Implement network modernization and desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS).

The UNJSPF (“Fund”) is committed to providing security and peace of mind for our clients, which include participants, retirees and beneficiaries. As an investment fiduciary, the Fund safeguards the welfare of its stakeholders and is committed to ensuring the sustainability of the assets. In the administration of contributions and benefits, the Fund strives to provide outstanding, high-quality services in line with its C.A.R.E. Strategy (Client-focused, Action-oriented, Relations-builder, and Efficiency-driven).

Below is an overview of focus areas for achieving the Fund institutional goals and mitigating risks.

Implementing the C.A.R.E. Strategy

The C.A.R.E. Strategy was launched by the Chief Executive of Pension Administration (CEPA) in 2021. The strategy has three interrelated priorities: improving client experience, strengthening the relationship with stakeholders, and modernizing pension services. The Fund leadership regularly monitors the implementation of the strategy through key performance indicators and takes corrective action as needed. Updates on its implementation are provided to the Pension Board. A monitoring report is published on the Fund website bi-annually.

In 2023, the CEPA continued to implement the C.A.R.E Strategy with a focus on integrating modern technologies and instilling continuous improvement into business practices.

People Strategy

In addition to geographic diversity, the Fund strives to ensure gender diversity and inclusivity across gender and geographic representation amongst its staff at all levels in line with the United Nations-wide Strategy on Gender Parity, we also aim to provide meaningful opportunities for career growth. To this end, we have sought to:

  • Increase gender parity at each internationally recruited staff level. 
  • Achieve at least fifty per cent of post appointments subject to geographical distribution from un- or under -represented Member States. 
  • Recruit staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible.
  • Develop training and strengthen partnerships with other UN agencies, funds and programmes. 

Achievements: 

  • The Fund has largely fulfilled its strategic objectives for human resources, including advancing the 2021-2023 HR Strategy, resulting in processes and principles that promote a more satisfied and skilled workforce and a gender-sensitive work environment.
  • Several staff groups were formed to enhance the Fund’s approach to workforce matters including the future of work, inclusion, decision-making, accountability, cross-team collaboration, communication, skill-building, transformation and innovation. 
  • The Fund hosted numerous training sessions on key subjects including data literacy and anti-racism, some of which were organized in partnership with other UN agencies, funds and programmes.

Responsible Investment

Entering 2023, the Fund’s primary objectives regarding responsible investment were to: 

  • Expand mechanisms for integrating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors into investment decision-making. 
  • Maintain or improve the rating of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) Score Report.
  • Progress toward the 2024 interim net-zero goal as set 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 a second Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) report, outlining the Fund’s progress on climate-related governance, strategy, risk management, metrics and targets.
  • Developed a new ESG-integration strategy and process, boosted private-market ESG integration and assessed fixed income ESG processes.
  • Issued an impact investing policy, which articulates definitions, governance structure, program mandates (impact and return), investment themes, principles and relevant frameworks.
  • Identified and submitted to the Investment Committee (IC) a compelling real estate net-zero fund with a strong decarbonization focus.
  • Surpassed the 40% carbon-reduction target for equities, corporate bonds and non-listed real estate portfolios.
  • Progressed in our engagement and financing of the transition efforts by exercising proxy-voting rights in over 99 percent of the meetings with votes and engaging with over 560 companies globally on 2,730 environmental, social, governance, strategy, risk and communication issues and objectives.

Risk Management

In 2023, the Fund maintained an updated governance structure, risk-management processes, and internal and external oversight mechanisms to better identify, assess, manage, monitor and report on the risks inherent to its strategy and operations, in regard to both pension administration and investment management. 

Key non-investment risk factors and risk governance and management practices are outlined in the Fund’s Statement of Internal Control, which is annexed to the Financial Statements and available here.

Achievements:

The Fund strengthened its incorporation of several non-investment risks, including: 

  • Risks derived from inflation and geopolitical crises: The Fund enhanced stress-testing to gauge inflation risk’s impact on financial sustainability and expanded pension benefit distribution channels to lower banking charges for beneficiaries in countries impacted by disruptions in the international transaction system.
  • Business Transformation: The Fund introduced new benefit payment channels, automated scanning and signature verification, and new functionalities in the Digital Certificate of Entitlement to provide enhanced service.
  • Organizational Culture: 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, this work focused on communication, collaboration and transformation.
  • Cybersecurity: 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 maintained its 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.
  • Business Continuity: The Fund gradually moved its pension administration information and communication technology systems to the cloud to enhance resilience and crisis preparedness. Additionally, the Fund’s Office of Investment Management successfully moved to a new Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform and focused on ensuring the resilience of critical service providers.
  • Data Governance: The Fund initiated several projects to enhance its data governance framework as part of an ongoing effort to be a data-driven organization.
  • Sustainability: The Fund expanded its mechanisms for integrating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors into investment decision-making and internal processes.

Technology

The Fund continuously pursues information technology enhancements to strengthen and modernize its operations and services.  

Achievements: 

  • The Fund transitioned to Infrastructure-as-a-Service, a cloud-based service provider, and decommissioned all legacy infrastructure systems. Established Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities to strengthen the availability and resilience of critical services.
  • A new IT service management platform was deployed to digitize workflows for raising service requests and incidents.
  • Obtained recertifications for International Organization for Standardization Information (ISO) standards on Information Security & Business Continuity.
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