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Search should ensure pension mandates are awarded only to firms with credible climate-risk management and responsible stewardship.
NEW YORK, NY — New York City Comptroller Mark Levine and trustees of the City’s five public pension systems today announced a search for asset managers to provide passive indexing services, opening a review of major pension mandates — including those currently managed by BlackRock and State Street — in which asset managers’ climate-related performance should be a central consideration.
The search comes as existing passive indexing contracts are set to expire by the end of 2026. New York City’s pension systems hold more than $127 billion in public equity investments, with the majority invested in passive index products. The search includes index strategies based on climate or ESG factors, consistent with each system’s investment guidelines.
Three of the city’s pension systems — NYCERS, TRS, and BERS — have adopted net-zero by 2040 implementation plans and have established climate expectations for their asset managers. In their latest annual climate reports, all three systems found that most of their public-markets managers were aligned with their net-zero expectations, while BlackRock remained assessed as insufficiently aligned across all three systems.
