Insights
Make My Money Matter

Ever wondered what your KiwiSaver Plan gets up to when you’re not looking? Meet Oblivia Coalmine, aka actress Olivia Colman, who plays a smooth-talking sinister CEO of an oil company who thanks pension savers for allowing oil and gas companies to “dig, drill and destroy more of the planet than ever before”.

The video that was produced by the UK not for profit Make My Money Matter (the European version of our home-grown Mindful Money) and directed by filmmaker and activist Richard Curtis, is aimed at activating a movement towards reducing fossil fuel investments in British Pensions Funds and it has gone viral.

Luckily for us as Kiwis, we have some good pension choices that divert our money away from fuelling the climate crisis. But according to Mindful Money we still have over $3 billion invested in fossil fuel companies.

As it states on the Mindful Money website “Individuals who invest in those funds need to understand that the majority of their investments are in companies that are contributing to the climate crisis, rather than investing in climate solutions.”

Few people think about the climate footprint of their KiwiSaver fund or their other investments. Yet up to 23% of the average kiwi’s carbon footprint is potentially coming from your KiwiSaver – it’s the average Kiwis next biggest carbon emitter after transport.

So, what can you do?

Find out what you are invested in.
1. Use the mindfulmoney.nz fund checker to see what your KiwiSaver is invested in. You might be as surprised as the hundreds of thousands of Brits who have watched Oblivia.

Change your fund, (it only takes a few minutes to switch providers).

Why is Pathfinder a climate friendly option?

We invest to reduce carbon
At Pathfinder we track the carbon intensity of our portfolio and compare our performance against global benchmarks, identifying priority areas, and tracking progress against global climate goals. We have identified three targets to bring us closer to achieving our goals of transitioning to a lower carbon world:

Increase the number of companies in our portfolio committed to science-based target initiatives by 7% per annum to reach 100% coverage by 2030. You can read our most recent Sustainability Report for more.

Maintaining our total portfolio emissions to at least 65% below the global market average. We use Greenhouse Gas Protocol Guidance to calculate these carbon emission equivalents, taking the total reported emissions from owned companies weighted by their percentage of ownership.

Reduce the carbon intensity of our portfolio in line with achieving emissions reductions between 22-32% by 2025 and 49-65% by 2030.

Our KiwiSaver and managed funds are named as “Climate Friendly” on the Mindful Money website – this means that the fund has less than 0.01% invested in any company producing coal, oil or gas, or the company must be making the transition to renewable energy on a 1.5-degree pathway. There must also be less than 0.01% invested in other aspects of Environmental Harm. Our funds are also ethical and certified as responsible by the RIAA.

Active Management

We are active managers who prioritise research and analysis and have the power to divest. This year we divested from Blackrock after they appointed a new board member who is the CEO of the largest oil company in the world. And our Chief Investment Officer and co-founder Paul Brownsey intentionally hasn’t invested the portfolio in the top 18 global banks that lend to the fossil fuel industry, after recognising the hidden relationship between banks and fossil fuel companies early on.

Go Green Bonds

If you’re especially passionate about the climate crisis and want to go further than avoiding high emitters by investing in solutions, check out our Green Bond Fund. This is exclusively invested in bonds allocated to green purposes that include clean transportation, clean water access, increasing resilience to extreme weather events and renewable energy supply networks.

Is your money supporting the climate crisis?” Find out more on Mindful Money's website.

Find out more about investing ethically.

Watch the full video at https://makemymoneymatter.co.uk/