Responsible Investment of Pension Funds; Ethical Considerations and Challenges

As the most important actors of social security systems, pension funds follow certain principles in their investments; One of these principles is the principle of responsible investment. Responsible investment means integrating environmental, social and governance factors in the decision-making process for (long-term) investment and managing related activities. The emphasis on responsible investment by international organizations and the tendency of many pension funds in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the European Union member states to do so indicate the importance of the issue. For this reason, the current article has investigated the responsible investment of pension funds using the descriptive-analytical method and based on library studies. The findings of this article indicate that pension funds in countries have different approaches to responsible investment; So that some of them strictly follow the rules of responsible investment; Some others try to comply with this principle to some extent, and another group of funds do not pay any attention to complying with this principle. The approach of these last two groups of funds is mainly due to the lack of knowledge required for responsible investment, the difficulty of choosing a portfolio and the high cost of this type of investment.