Investing with positive impact

As an insurer, NN maintains a diverse investment portfolio to meet the obligations to our insurance policyholders and for equity (capital). NN Group's portfolio that we invest for our own account and risk spans various asset classes, sectors and countries. We integrate sustainability factors into our investment processes whether we are researching and analysing companies and countries, voting as shareholders or selecting asset managers.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) manages our listed equity portfolio and the large majority of our fixed income assets. 

The integration of sustainability factors is an integral part of GSAM’s investment processes. All analysts have access to sustainability data from several data/research providers, which includes information on how each company scores on different sustainability factors compared to its sector average. The analysts incorporate this data into their investment cases, thereby looking at the materiality for each company.  

Read more in the Responsible Investment Policy published on the  GSAM website. 

Criteria for classifying green, social and sustainability bonds 

By investing in green, social and sustainability bonds, NN contributes to the broader sustainability transition and aims to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We ask our external managers to follow the NN Green, Social and Sustainability Bond Standard which sets minimum requirements that the bonds need to meet. The standard follows internationally adopted frameworks, draws on current market practices and needs to be applied together with the NN Responsible Investment Framework Policy.

Investing in Climate Solutions

We have developed an internal framework for defining climate solutions investments. As an initial step in classifying climate solutions investments, we focused on energy efficiency and renewable energy. In 2021, we set an ambition to increase our investments in climate solutions with an additional EUR 6 billion by 2030, taking the total investments in climate solutions to around EUR 10.8 billion.

NN Group strives to integrate ESG factors across all asset classes and has formalised a sustainability approach for its own real estate portfolio. Our responsible investment guidelines for real estate set out the expectations for our (external) real estate managers.NN Group has been a member of the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) since 2014. We use the annual Real Estate Assessment to evaluate and engage with our real estate investments with the aim of improving the sustainability performance of our portfolio. For information on how we perform in GRESB, refer to the NN Group Annual Report.

NN Group’s responsible investment guidelines for private equity cover investments in funds that are managed by external private equity managers. The guidelines define our approach to integrate ESG factors in the selection and appointment of new private equity managers. For existing investments, we seek to actively engage with the managers to raise awareness on the importance of ESG factors during the evaluation and ongoing management of its private equity portfolio companies. Our ESG dashboard is part of our internal performance reports and tracks the progress of the private equity funds and managers.