Press release
Principal® Real Estate Strategies Score Highly With GRESB for the Sixth Consecutive Year
High ratings in global benchmarks show long-standing commitment to ESG standards DES MOINES, Iowa--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Principal® announced today that two of
About this update from Principal Financial Group Inc
[{"type":"text","content":"\nHigh ratings in global benchmarks show long-standing commitment to ESG standards\n\n DES MOINES, Iowa--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nPrincipal® announced today that two of its private equity property strategies and a European core property strategy managed by Principal Real Estate Investors received 4-star ratings in 2021 from GRESB, the global ESG benchmark for real estate assets. The ratings place all three strategies in the top 40% of GRESB participants worldwide1 and exhibit a long-standing commitment by Principal Real Estate Investors to integrate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards into its investment practices while pursuing positive financial results for clients.\n\nThis is the sixth consecutive year the core and core-plus U.S. private real estate equity strategies have earned a 4-star rating from GRESB and scored in the top 25 of their peer groups.\n\n\"Our strong GRESB performance over the past six years demonstrates the success of our ESG program with the ability of funds to continually implement new ESG practices and perform well against their peers in the U.S. and Europe,\" said Jennifer McConkey, senior director of operations and sustainability for Principal Real Estate Investors. “With ESG continuing to rise in prominence as a key financial and risk management strategy, we are committed to staying on top of the latest developments in the real estate industry to help clients achieve positive performance outcomes.\"\n\nIn total, Principal submitted two U.S. funds and six European funds for participation in GRESB in 2021, six of which were also submitted in 2020. Of the six, four improved performance in 2021 compared to their 2020 GRESB assessments. In general, this improvement was due to better tenant engagement, increased property data coverage, and utility and greenhouse gas data verification. In particular, the “G” rating for governance was especially strong across all eight Principal strategies in GRESB’s ESG breakdown.\n\nAll eight strategies outperformed the peer average in every scored category for management, which includes leadership, policies, reporting, risk management, and stakeholder engagement. In addition, all strategies scored perfectly on data monitoring and review in the performance category.\n\nThe overarching ESG framework for Principal Real Estate Investors, called the Pillars of Respon...