Pension funds face a range of systemic risks – climate change, biodiversity, antimicrobial resistance, and more – and addressing these issues as individual funds is challenging if not impossible. Therefore, a number of large global pension funds and endowments have participated in discussions, led by the University of Cambridge, on how asset owners can best collaborate to address the systemic risks we all face. This has developed into a working partnership – the Cambridge Universal Ownership Initiative – that will enable the funds to address a broad range of issues.
The role of the initiative will be to provide both the coordination and academic rigour required to undertake ambitious, evidence-led, issue-specific engagements to mitigate systemic risks. The Initiative is a partnership among asset owners, academic institutions (including the University of Cambridge), and other stakeholders.
