The £120bn Border to Coast Pensions Partnership has updated its strategies for responsible investment and engagement for 2030, designed in collaboration with partner funds, while the roughly £84bn Universities Superannuation Scheme has refreshed its voting framework.  

Border to Coast, one of six Local Government Pension Scheme pools, said the updated engagement strategy "enhances the pool’s escalation approach and places greater emphasis on board accountability where engagement does not deliver sufficient progress".   

“Across the Border to Coast partnership, we see effective stewardship not as an add-on to investment, but as a core component of how we manage risk, allocate capital, and enhance outcomes across portfolios. This requires disciplined engagement with companies and markets on the issues that most directly influence financial performance, alongside a clear willingness to escalate where progress is insufficient," said chief investment officer Joe McDonnell.  

Stressing the long-term horizon of the partner funds, he said: “The world continues to change and not always predictably. Acting on behalf of our partner funds, we need to respond to short-term developments while maintaining a clear focus on delivering returns over the long term.” 

The asset pool has defined four engagement priorities:  

Head of responsible investment Tim Manuel added: “Good governance, climate resilience, nature-related risks, and workforce issues can all have a bearing on portfolio resilience and long-term returns. Understanding and managing these long-term risks is an important part of our role as a long-term investor and supports partner funds in fulfilling their fiduciary duty to their members.”

USS meanwhile undertook “a comprehensive refresh of our voting framework to support more effective stewardship”, according to its latest annual report to the end of March this year.  

Chief investment officer Simon Pilcher said the voting refresh includes trustee‑owned voting principles which set out how USS uses its vote but allows implementation responsibilities “to sit appropriately within USSIM – those closest to investment decisions”.  

In addition, updated voting guidance outlines the scheme's position, context and rationale for voting on management and shareholder resolutions.  

“The refresh gives us clearer ownership and oversight of our voting activities, strengthens our accountability and ensures that our voting activities continue to reflect the Scheme’s long‑term priorities,” said Pilcher.  

Russell Picot, who chairs the USS investment committee and evaluates the investments, said that “strong progress was made on responsible investment, especially the integration of responsible investment considerations across the wider portfolio, positive recognition from The Pensions Regulator for our TCFD Report 2025, and the publication of the ‘The Policy Challenges of the Energy Transition’ with support from Transition Risk Exeter (Trex)”. 

However, Picot added that "there is still more to do on the integration of physical risk under the climate scenario analysis work”. 

The progress on RI in particular, along with the high quality of investment advice and support, meant the committee kept the overall score for USSIM at between 'average' and 'good', saying this is on target.

It reserved some criticism for the in-house team though as active management remained below target across defined benefit and defined contribution, mainly because of the scheme's long-term real return equity mandate and across private equity and private infrastructure markets.

USS's DC performance lagged some peers, the committee noted, but was stronger on a risk-adjusted basis as it relies less heavily on equities.