Rest, NZ Super Fund top global rankings for best practices

Rest and the NZ Super Fund have bagged a perfect score in GlobalSWF's GSR scoreboard for governance, sustainability, and resilience.

Established in 2020, the annual study examines all the publicly available information from the world's largest sovereign wealth and public pension funds to compile its scorecard.

It assesses criteria including transparency and accountability, governance structure and processes, ethical standards and policies, and alignment with sustainable development goals.

Rest, NZ Super Fund, and Temasek were the only funds to achieve a perfect score in the Asia Pacific region. Six others achieved the same feat across the Americas and EMEA regions.

This was the largest number of perfect scorers to date.

NZ Super Fund chief executive Jo Townsend said the scorecard is based on a comprehensive evaluation of factors that are important to the fund's long-term success.

"I'm very pleased to see our team's hard work recognised by GlobalSWF," she said.

The average score of all the other funds, however, remained flat from last year at 61%.

"Sadly, we're seeing geopolitics and trade tensions taking over as key concerns of sovereign funds, some of which are turning more domestic, isolated and opaque," GlobalSWF said.

"As a result, the average governance score decreased for the first time since 2020."

Meanwhile, sustainability scores slightly recovered this year as funds continued to pursue responsible investing.

Resilience score remained flat amid several sovereign investors hiring business continuity teams and revising their risk frameworks and investment policies.

"Unfortunately, this is an industry prone to changes and political intervention, and 3 of the 200 funds assessed last year have ceased to exist," Global SWF said.