10 January 2024 
Ever wondered how the retirement funds in Denmark are invested from a Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) perspective? In cooperation with Matter, Denominator has analyzed the 12 largest Danish pension funds investments. Key insights from the report:
- Investments in worst performing companies: All pension funds exhibit exposure to DEI bottom quartiles, meaning they invest in the 25% worst performing companies relative to their country peers from a DEI perspective, across several DEI dimensions.
- Gender: 97 billion DKK is invested in companies without any women in either executive team or board of directors. This equals to ~15% of the analyzed pension funds total equity investments.
- Portfolio exposure to varies by DEI dimension: Investments in the worst performing companies vary across DEI dimensions. The highest investments in worst performers are found within Race/ethnicity and Executive diversity. The lowest investments in the worst performers are found in the Disability dimension.
- Race/Ethnicity: ~92 billion DKK is invested worst performing companies from a Race/Ethnicity perspective
- Differences among Danish pension funds: Investments in worst DEI performing companies vary between Danish pension funds with factors from 1.38x to 8x, depending on the DEI dimension. E.g., if a Danish woman wants to limit her retirement funds to companies underperforming on Gender, she then risks a 5x difference in performance, depending on which pension she selects (assuming freedom of choice, which is not always available in Denmark).
UN’s Principle for Responsible Investments (PRI) made DEI a separate focus area to consider within responsible investment in 2022. This new report provides transparency into how the 12 largest Danish pension funds have invested their members’ retirement savings from a DEI perspective. All pension funds considered in this analysis are PRI signatories.
The included pension funds are:
· ATP
· AkademikerPension
· AP Pension
· Danica Pension
· Lægernes Pension & Bank
· P+, Pensionskassen for Akademikere
· PenSam
· PensionDanmark
· PFA
· PKA
· Sampension
· Velliv
