Middle Eastern funds have reported the best improvement in governance, sustainability, and resilience (GSR) scores globally, rising to 52% in 2023 from 32% in 2020, according to Global SWF, a data platform that tracks more than 400 sovereign wealth funds.

Global SWF’s GSR Scoreboard analyses GSR practices and efforts of the world’s major state-owned investors (SOIs), including sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and public pension funds (PPFs).

Despite the recent addition of some smaller funds, institutions such as Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala and ADQ, Qatar’s Qatar Investment Authority and Bahrain’s Mumtalakat have embraced the rating tool and taken the opportunity to improve practices and achieve a stronger alignment with international standards. 

Others, such as Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) and Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), continue not to engage and have stayed with identical scores, 56% and 48%, respectively, the report said.

The 2023 scoreboard is led by four state-owned investors (SOIs): Singapore’s Temasek, Canada’s pension manager CDPQ, New Zealand’s superannuation fund NZ Super, and Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, all with 100%.

The extended leaderboard features 12 sovereign funds and 29 pension funds with scores between 88% and 100%. 

Most of the funds in this selected group hail from developed markets: 17 from Europe, 11 from North America and nine from developed Asia and Pacific. 

Only four funds are from emerging markets:  PIF from Saudi Arabia, Mubadala from the UAE, NSIA from Nigeria and GPF from Thailand.

In the fourth edition of the GSR scoreboard, SWF rated 200 SOIs from 81 different countries.  

(Editing by Seban Scaria seban.scaria@lseg.com)