ABP has disposed of its investments in South Korean utility company Korean Electricity Power Company (KEPCO).

The Dutch pension fund said it had sold the investment due to KEPCO’s plans to build new coal-fired power plants in Indonesia and Vietnam, despite serious objections from ABP. Including KEPCO, ABP said it has now sold off its investments in eight Asian companies in 2020 with over 90 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity because they had plans to expand coal-fired power stations. APG sustainability expert, Yoo-Kyung Park, said: “We pulled out all the stops to change the company's thoughts. We wrote letters to management, increased the pressure in the media and interacted with social and environmental organizations. As 51 per cent of KEPCO is owned by the South Korean government, we, along with other investors, also addressed the Korean government on its responsibility. Unfortunately, that did not yield any results.”

Monthly payments to pensioners from Denmark’s Industriens Pension have been raised by an average of 6 per cent.

A new statement from the company, which provides pensions to around 45,000 pensioners in Denmark, showed that those receiving income from its funds had their monthly payments adjusted upwards by between 3 per cent and 10 per cent. Industriens Pension insurance director, Joan Alsing, said: “We are really pleased that pensioners are experiencing a solid increase in payments after a challenging year with corona and large fluctuations in the financial markets in both directions during the year. Among other things, the increase is an expression of a reasonable return also in 2020.”

The number of disability pension applications dropped by 0.9 per cent in 2020, according to Finland’s Varma.

The number of applications for disability pensions received in the year was 4,171, while the total number of applications, including those for fixed-term disability pensions to support rehabilitation, was 13,013, a decrease of 1.3 per cent on the year before. Varma pension director, Jyrki Rasi, noted that the number of applications for disability pensions had fluctuated throughout the year, starting to increase in the spring, decreasing in the early autumn and then climbing again towards the end of the year. The relative share of disability pension applications that were due to mental disorders increased from the previous year by 1.8 percentage points 36.3 per cent to 38.1 per cent. There was also a rise in the rejection rate for disability pension applications, which climbed from 34.6 per cent to 37.0 per cent.

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