Getting to know the regulation – maintenance and development of personnel competences

As a pension insurer, we operate in a highly regulated sector under authority supervision. Accordingly, both Veritas and its employees must comply with the national and international legislation, decrees and authority regulations, as well as with Veritas’ internal guidelines and operating principles.

It is of the utmost importance for the operation of the company that every single Veritas employee is familiar with the regulation governing their own work as well as with the company’s operating guidelines, and adheres to same in their daily work. The compliance function plays a vital role in this work.

Hence, we provide and obtain training on a continuous basis. Every single day we can learn from each other in our work. In addition, all employees have both the possibility and obligation to attend training relating to their work, for instance in online training sessions intended for everyone and in more tailor-made internal training sessions. The internal guidelines concerning all employees are available in our intranet and, largely, also on our external website.

Each new employee is inducted in the guidelines and procedures concerning them as a Veritas employee and their own work. The entire personnel complete a regular compliance online course, reviewing responsible business principles. We maintain our personnel’s data security and information security competence through annually recurring training sessions.

Goal 6: Every Veritas employee is familiar with the regulations governing their work

Year 2021

Certain guidelines are adopted by the Executive Group and the Board of Directors annually and any amendments are communicated to all employees through the intranet. Such guidelines include the Code of Conduct, anti-bribery guidelines, insider guidelines, code of conduct for conflicts of interest situations, prevention of money-laundering and terrorism, risk assessment and operating principles, insider guidelines, outsourcing guidelines as well as guidelines concerning occupational well-being activities.

In 2021, we organised online courses concerning personal data protection and the confidentiality of personal data and trade secrets for everyone. All new permanent insiders are provided with training relating to insider regulation.

In 2021, training was organised for all departments on the submitting of a compliance and operative risk report, as well as the process pertaining to same.

The induction programme for new employees includes all online courses (GDPR, compliance) as well as the Data Protection Officer’s data security training.

All Veritas employees are able to participate in our 15-minute corporate responsibility sessions held monthly, entailing a review of topical corporate responsibility questions. In June, we arranged a training for all those willing on the topic of responsible investment.

Ownership policy

In our ownership policy, we outline how we identify ourselves as an owner, what our expectations are and how we exercise the rights conferred by our holdings.

Veritas’ updated ownership policy was adopted by the company’s Board of Directors on 14 December 2021. The first ownership policy in line with the amended legislation pertained to the year 2020.

It is our task as a pension insurer to manage the statutory pension security and to invest pension assets seeking the highest return possible, within the confines of an acceptable risk level. This allows us to shoulder our responsibility as part of the Finnish pension system.

The objective of our investment activities is to secure the funding of the pension system in the long-term. The good governance of our holdings secures the long-term return of the investments, and this is why we are seeking to leverage our influence over our holding through ownership policy.

We incorporate corporate responsibility and sustainability considerations in our investment activities extensively, so as to consider environmental (E), societal and social (S) as well as governance (G) aspects. We believe that companies seeking to take account of the possibilities and risks embedded in ESG aspects are better positioned to succeed in adapting their operations to changes in the operating environment.

We encourage companies to report on their environmental impacts and to set ambitious targets in an effort to mitigate climate change, reduce environmental hazards and conserve biodiversity (E).

We consider one of the prerequisites for the longer-term financial success of a company to be the fair and equal treatment of its employees. The promotion of workplace well-being constitutes one of the aspects of our activities as a pension insurer. We require the same also from the companies in which we have a holding (S).

It is important for us that the companies we invest in commit to good management and governance practice and to treating all owners/investors equally (G).

We focus particular attention on the clear and timely disclosure of information by the companies and mutual funds we invest in, as well as their openness in questions pertinent to us as investors when reporting on their financial status, strategy and risks (G).

In our capacity as the owner, we attend the annual general meetings of companies listed in Finland. At general meetings, we vote in support of the proposals of the companies’ Boards of Directors, unless there is a justified cause not to.

We annually publish on our website a report concerning the implementation of our ownership policy, of the most significant voting events and of our voting behaviour at the annual general meetings of companies listed in Finland in which we hold shares. The report has now been published for the years 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Further information is available here: https://veritas.fi/en/about-us/financial-information-and-investments/ownership-policy/

Goal 7: We develop our reporting relating to how we implement responsibility in investment activities

Owing to reasons attributable to PRI, no evaluation report was available for 2021.