For nearly 160 years Pacific Life has built confidence for millions of individuals, families, businesses, and pension plans by addressing their financial needs with a wide range of insurance and investment products. We are an independent company that focuses on enduring financial strength and long-term strategies that benefit our policyowners and clients. Pacific Life’s investment team delivers solid risk-adjusted returns that provide flexible, scalable, and value-added solutions to Pacific Life’s General Account and in support of Pacific Life’s products.   

It is important that we do so in a responsible manner. Investing responsibly is a key pillar of Pacific Life’s Corporate Social Responsibility program. It aligns with Pacific Life’s Values of Integrity to do the right thing and Enduring Strength with a focus on long-term financial strength and resilience.

As an enterprise, we believe that responsible investing is not only good for the environment and society, but also key to our long-term financial strength and our mission to help our clients and their families attain peace of mind and financial security. We continually evolve our investment processes and incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors to better align our decision-making with our desire to invest responsibly.   

ESG Integration
As a long-term investor, we understand that the success of our investments is tied to the degree to which they reflect ESG principles. Integrating an ESG framework into our investment processes augments our ability to successfully accomplish our goals. By having actionable information available about potential investments, our investment team can make holistic and informed decisions. We optimize our profitability, asset values, and creditworthiness by acting responsibly. In doing so, we will experience higher sustainable portfolio returns in line with our responsibilities to our employees, policyholders, community, and other stakeholders.  

We integrate ESG factors into the analysis of our investments and the decision-making process for our General Account and Guaranteed Separate Account investments in several ways. Though not exhaustive, some of the ESG factors that may be considered as part of the assessment process are listed below.

Environmental: greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency, renewable energy, decarbonization, water consumption, waste disposal, recycling programs, green buildings, physical risks, transition risk, ecological impacts, air quality, and pollution.

Social: human capital development, quality of life, human rights, affordable housing, redeveloped or remediated areas, equal opportunity business development, opportunity zone development, principles of equity and inclusion, supply chain management, access and affordability, health and safety.

Governance: corporate control oversight, organizational controls, identification and evaluation of conflicts of interest, reporting practices, business ethics, data security and privacy protection, risk management practices, transparency and reporting, corporate strategy, regulatory compliance, anticompetitive practices.

We collect ESG data for all investment opportunities. We score our holdings utilizing a variety of both third-party and proprietary inputs against a range of relevant ESG factors and monitor changes to these scores on an ongoing basis. We exclude all new investments which do not meet our standards. Due to the impact climate change continues to have on our world and the investment landscape, we actively assess and monitor the climate risk to both existing and proposed fixed-income and equity investments. We review the responsible investment policies of our third-party asset managers as part of our due diligence process. We engage with outside organizations to strengthen our integration efforts. We have adopted reporting standards in line with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework. Building on our commitment to Responsible Investing, Pacific Life is a signatory of the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI).

Policy Scope and Oversight
We continuously focus on the overall ESG impacts of our investments. This leads us to emphasize investments in areas including energy efficiency, renewable power, and low-income housing in support of our goals and objectives. To this end, we have invested billions of dollars in businesses and programs that make a positive impact on our environment and our communities. We encourage greater energy efficiency in our real estate assets, and we are committed to making investments in support of the global clean energy transition towards more renewable sources of power. In addition, as founding members of both IMPACT Community Capital and 360 Community Capital, we provide financing to support new affordable housing opportunities in underserved communities. 

The Management Investment Committee (MIC), chaired by our Chief Investment Officer oversees our responsible investing program, its management and implementation. This includes governance of our Responsible Investment Policy, which covers our General Account and Guaranteed Separate Account investments sourced internally and through third-party asset managers. The Policy is intended to serve as a guide for our investment decisions. This policy is reviewed at least annually by Pacific Life’s MIC and the Investment and Finance Committee of the Pacific Mutual Holding Company Board of Directors.  We believe that we can make a positive difference for our employees, our communities, and our environment while delivering solid investment results in support of our policyholders’ and clients’ financial security.    

Last Updated November 2024