There was one clear protagonist at PRI in Person this month and it wasn’t the man living in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It wasn’t COP30. And it wasn’t AI.
It was PRI.
On its surface, the organisation has never been so successful. Record membership, record turnover and another PRI in Person conference that demonstrated the unique role that event plays in the responsible investment calendar.
But there is a spectre haunting the organisation, one that avid Responsible Investor readers will have seen lurk in these pages. In the nooks and crannies of PRI in Person, the various chinks in PRI’s armour were the topic du jour.
For the first time, I heard doubt about PRI’s future. What role it should play? What is PRI actually? An event organiser? An ambition raiser? An interest group?
We learn from Mike Tyson that “success breeds confidence and confidence breeds success”. But I did not see confidence in Brazil.
The problem is that we need it! We need a bold, strong PRI.
So I asked PRI participants what they thought was needed. And rather than using this space to regale you with all of my half-baked ideas, I will take the liberty of sharing the six most interesting ideas I heard – anonymised of course, and with some poetic licence of paraphrasing for the benefit of the reader (hence the quotation marks).
I don’t necessarily agree with these ideas, nor are they necessarily internally consistent, nor coloured by the same ambition to reshape. But each of them speaks to an idea of PRI that I think RI readers can engage with.
“PRI should abolish ALL reporting”
“The original purpose of PRI was to help signal ambition across signatories and support them in benchmarking their activities to their peers. At 5,000-plus signatories, the idea that there is some sort of responsible investment threshold being delivered by signatories versus non-signatories seems absurd. And I don’t know any signatories that use PRI reporting in their internal systems as a meaningful benchmarking tool. As for asset owners, the forensics they require from us go way beyond PRI anyway.
“So what is the point of reporting anything anymore? Why not admit that PRI has turned into an industry association that convenes a conversation on responsible investment and represents the responsible investment interests to external stakeholders on our behalf. If we could save the PRI reporting costs, we could spend more resources on other stuff.”
“PRI needs to publish league tables”
“I still remember the days of the Asset Owner Disclosure Project. That obviously didn’t work. But there is a profound desire in the industry for benchmarking. And public accountability around that benchmarking can help.
“The problem is that the reporting is not at its core a benchmarking exercise. Could we perhaps identify three to five metrics that are truly comparable, such as the percentage of budget spend on responsible investment? Or something like what the Swiss government does with PACTA.
“David Atkins talked about moving from 200 to 40 metrics in the reporting update. But maybe we actually need to decide on five or 10 metrics, and make them the centrepiece of responsible investment benchmarking, such that investors feel compelled to improve when they see their ranking. Even 40 indicators is too much to really focus the mind.”
“With GFANZ moving into the background, PRI needs to bring the working groups to the public eye”
“PRI’s working groups play a unique role in the ecosystem. We can convene to interrogate together key issues and questions. I learn so much from them. But too little of these insights become public. GFANZ perhaps published too many reports. But could PRI focus a bit more on socialising the learnings from the working groups in a systematic way. Working groups are the future of PRI, but they could be much more impactful.
“There are a lot of standard-setting organisations out there, PRI isn’t that. But they have ‘principles’ in their name. Maybe they can through the working groups develop a series of ‘principles’ across things like responsible technology, policy engagement, labour rights, etc.”
“Set up an office in Dubai”
“PRI is a global organisation and unique in that way. There really aren’t many counterparts in any industry that have that capacity. But then why is still so much of PRI concentrated in London. The Louvre has a museum in the Middle East, why can’t PRI strengthen its ‘local network’.
“Reduce the London presence dramatically and move towards more of a global network with stronger regional presence. The Middle East is the first place I’d go (also, that should be the next PRI in Person after Amsterdam!), but then expand from there. Of course PRI already has its regional networks. But we need proper offices.”
“Fully outsource PRI in Person breakout events”
“My favourite events this year were the side events organised by sponsors and partner organisations. Why can’t we have a more colourful PRI in Person where the plenary becomes the home of sharing insights from the work throughout the year in the flagship working groups, and even best practice from practitioners, but then the side events can be invigorated through competition, with perhaps a combination of academics and sponsors hosting different events or rooms throughout the conference and competing for the best convening ideas? That could really invigorate the content.
“We already have sponsors that can host these events. Let’s lean in, complement those with technical non-commercial hosts and just make the event content more exciting!”
“I want PRI to lobby for my industry with finance ministries. That also means taking names”
“PRI doesn’t get enough credit for the policy access it has. Yes, perhaps too much policy access has been used to work on disclosures. But I see PRI as representing the interests of my industry. And when it does that, like any self-respecting lobby organisation, it needs sticks as well as carrots. That means identifying which markets are lagging and leading, and highlighting to financial policymakers that lagging has a cost in terms of responsible investment inflows. We need guidance on assessing which markets are doing well and which aren’t. You don’t have to aim for the soul when you hit, but we need our regulators to understand that PRI is taking notes and sharing them with us.”
“Introduce PRI membership credits”
“I don’t mind the PRI membership fees, it is the reporting that creates the most costs. But I wish there was a more active ‘offering’ to signatories tied to those fees. Why doesn’t a membership fee come with a set amount of credits that can be used on various things like PRI in Person attendance, capacity-building, PRI Academy, working groups, other events, etc?
“That could also create more incentive to drive PRI engagement not just in my responsible investment team, and would allow me to use these credits to bring other people in my organisation more into the PRI fold as they participate in teaching and training and events.”
My favourite Mike Tyson quote of all time is that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. For PRI, it seems it might be time for a new plan. Lack of ideas definitely won’t be the problem.
Jakob Thomä is co-founder of Theia Finance Labs (formerly Two Degrees Investing Initiative), research director at Inevitable Policy Response and professor in practice at University of London SOAS.
