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As a member of the Railways Pension Scheme (RPS) the money you pay into your pension gets invested in companies, some of which you may have heard of, by Railpen. The approach Railpen take when they decide how to manage your pension, where to invest it and how to positively influence the companies they choose to invest it in, is known as ‘stewardship’.

Every year Railpen produces a detailed report, outlining its work on stewardship and how it is helping to ‘secure our members’ future’ in line with the Trustee’s mission to pay members’ pensions securely, affordably and sustainably. The latest report is available now at railpen.com/knowledge-hub/reports/

The 2024 Stewardship Report

The 2024 Stewardship Report explains how Railpen, on behalf of the Trustee, has been working to protect and enhance member outcomes through proactive and thoughtful stewardship over the past 12 months.

It also includes information on the progress Railpen has achieved across its key priorities:

• Its advocacy efforts for system-wide stewardship – Railpen recognises that combining its voice, influence and expertise with other investors and stakeholders whose interests align with its own, can make its engagement efforts more effective. In 2024, Railpen worked on a report ‘Cybersecurity Risk & Resilience: Guidance for Investors’ with Royal London Asset Management to help the industry better understand the financial materiality and threat landscape of cybersecurity risk and provide practical guidance for investors as they engage with portfolio companies. 

  Railpen also continued to build on its previous work, advocating against changes to the UK listing rules, specifically the introduction of dual-class share structures (DCSS). There is strong evidence that the benefits of introducing DCSS decline only a few years after a company lists. As a shareholder, Railpen influences the corporate behaviours of companies by voting at their Annual General Meetings (AGMs). 

• In 2024, Railpen worked with Governance Perspectives Ltd. to produce the Acting on Audit report, which identifies the main factors that affect audit quality and auditor accountability, and includes recommendations to policymakers, investors and companies to improve transparency, engagement and audit quality. 
  

• The 2024 Stewardship Report also spotlights Railpen’s updated 2025 Voting Policy which has been enhanced with more robust plans to hold companies more accountable for errors or negligence.

It also includes more information on Railpen’s stewardship philosophy and approach, its progress and effectiveness at serving members’ interests along with case studies showing how its work has been applied. A glossary is provided on page 75 and 76, to explain any unfamiliar terms.

Watch out for the 2024 Member Review coming out in Autumn

Your annual Member Review, offering a condensed version of the Stewardship Report, will be published in October. It will provide an overview of the work undertaken by Railpen and the Trustee on the topics and issues that members have told us are most important them.

We will let you know via this website as soon as this report is available.

In the meantime you can read more about Railpen’s approach to investing in the Investment section of the RPS website and take a look at our 2023 Member Review. Check out the short videos we created to help explain some of the key points in it.