November 17, 2025
Reflections from PRI in Person 2025
Ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, 1,300 finance industry representatives from around the world gathered in São Paulo for PRI in Person 2025. The event focused on how investors can navigate global challenges to safeguard long-term financial returns for beneficiaries. Against a backdrop of the ESG backlash, mounting climate-related catastrophes and destabilizing social and geopolitical risks, attendees shared their perspectives and vision on how to enhance the resiliency of investment strategies and realize investable opportunities that provide positive financial, environmental and societal outcomes.
Long-term investors staying the course to manage future liabilities
Responsible investment (RI) is far from declining. It remains a key pillar in the global institutional investment industry, including in the US, which was the most represented country at PRI in Person, accounting for 20% of delegates. Major US pension plans and asset managers showcased their leadership and enduring commitment to RI across multiple side events focused on transition, solutions and engagement strategies. When asked about the why, investors universally responded that when you invest in managing liabilities that incur over generations to come, your fiduciary duty is to consider all factors that can impact financial returns and the stability of the financial system.
Asset owners using their clout to advance progress and policy
A resounding theme at PRI in Person was the influential role of large sovereign wealth funds, pension plans and insurance companies in shaping capital markets and policy action on sustainable finance. As universal owners, asset owners typically have portfolios with broad exposure to the entire economy. Many also carry liabilities that extend over decades, making stable financial systems essential to their mandate. This long-term exposure also leaves them vulnerable to systemic risks that cannot be mitigated through diversification. As a result, asset owners are incentivized to engage in stewardship that promotes the stability of the economic, environmental and social systems upon which whole-market returns depend.
A key highlight was the first-ever Asset Owner Forum, which examined system-level investing and investment manager oversight. Engagement emerged as a central theme at the conference — including engagement with sovereign bond issuers, policymakers, heavy emitters, beneficiaries and managers. New initiatives were highlighted, including ASCOR, which assesses 85 countries on their climate action, enabling fixed-income investors to signal the importance of tangible progress when responding to sovereign bond issuance.
Many asset owners also emphasized the need to set clearer and more assertive RI expectations for asset managers. They underscored that investing in a sustainable economy is a shared journey between asset owners and managers. Supporting this, the new PRI reporting framework will help standardize and strengthen approaches to engagement across the industry.
Sustainability validated as a source for value creation
Sustainability is more than managing risks. Investors use sustainability as a strategy to create and protect financial value over the holding period. In public markets, this often manifests through engagement, for example, with the messaging to grow market share from sustainable products or decarbonizing operations. In private markets, sustainability can serve as a holistic framework for driving revenue growth, cost reduction, employee retention and risk management. The conference showcased the latest thinking in this area and introduced the Sustainability Value Creation Framework aimed at driving financial value through sustainability in private markets.
A second dimension of creating sustainable value is investing in solutions to social and environmental issues. The conference featured rich discussions on opportunities across renewable energy, carbon removals and nature-based or nature-protecting solutions on the environmental side, as well as investments in healthcare, education, connectivity and social infrastructure. Opportunities from emerging markets were also in focus, with stronger representation than ever before.
Responsibility comes full circle
RI has its origins in grappling with ethical issues such as apartheid, tobacco and gambling, leading to the first investment screens by ethics-oriented and faith-based investors dating back fifty years ago. Since the formation of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2006, the world’s largest institutional investors have acknowledged that integrating ESG factors into investment decisions, together with financial factors, can unlock value creation opportunities while mitigating financial risks.
Today, new actors and emerging realities are reshaping the conversation. The rapid increase in national defense budgets has turned weapons and technology companies into growth sectors. At the same time, nuclear generation is contributing to clean energy transitions, while AI, robotics and drones, technologies that support economic productivity, also carry profound ethical and societal risks, including dual-use applications in conflict zones. These developments are creating complex dilemmas for asset owners whose RI policies and screens currently prohibit exposure to such sectors. We expect substantive dialogue in boardrooms and rewriting of investment policy over the next 12 months consequently.
What became clear over three days in São Paulo is that while responsible investment is here to stay, we are navigating a new world order where maintaining a steady pulse on market forces, government action and changing environmental and societal dynamics is both a fiduciary duty and a sound investment strategy. Coming together to leverage the power of collective action makes sense. As the world looks to COP30 in Belém, that shared commitment has never been more critical.
At Quinn+Partners, we advise companies and investors on developing strategies to drive, measure and manage their positive social and environmental outcomes through their business and investment practices. If you are ready to take the next step on your responsible investment journey or simply assess where you are at, please get in touch.
Resources and initiatives highlighted at PRI in Person 2025
The conference sessions introduced many tools to participants. Here are some that may provide value for you:
Developed by: ASCOR Project, led by asset owners, asset managers and supported by international investor networks
- Conceptual Foundations: Understanding relationships between business, finance, people and inequality
Developed by: Taskforce on Inequality and Social-Related Financial Disclosures (TISFD)
Developed by: The Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB)
- Addressing Climate Impacts: An overview of NZAOA asset owners’ long-term interests and responsibilities and Guidelines and Recommendations for Halting Deforestation
Developed by: UN-convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA), Principles for Responsible Investment
Developed by: Developed in collaboration with industry leaders including GRESB
Developed by: PRI, together with Bain & Company and NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business
- PRI Reporting Framework 2026: A Preview
- PRI-led Collaborative Stewardship Initiatives:
- Spring – an initiative for nature, addressing the systemic risks of biodiversity loss to protect the long-term interests of investors
- Climate Action 100+ – an investor-led initiative to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take appropriate action on climate change in order to mitigate financial risk and to maximize the long-term value of assets
- Advance – a collaborative initiative where institutional investors aim to protect and enhance risk-adjusted returns by advancing progress on human rights through investor stewardship
- Sovereign Engagement on Climate Change – an initiative enabling investors to support governments in taking action on climate change to mitigate financial risk and maximize the long-term value of assets
- Investor Policy Dialogue on Deforestation – an investor-led engagement initiative that aims to halt deforestation in the most vulnerable biomes of the world