Of the indicators the National Pension Service (NPS) uses for its ESG evaluation, only about 75% are actually evaluated. In the environmental area alone, the figure is 53.3%. The National Assembly raised these figures at the October 2026 parliamentary audit, and they mean that four or five of every ten environmental indicators are left blank with no evaluation.
NPS Chairman Kim Sung-joo said in his response that the fund would consider reducing investment in companies with low ESG ratings. If the ratings are used as a yardstick for choosing investments, ratings assigned with one in four indicators left blank would become the basis for cutting investment.
Lawmakers also said that because the NPS does not release its detailed ESG evaluation criteria or explanations of its indicators, it is difficult to get companies to disclose information. The concern was that items that can be checked publicly are evaluated, while information that companies have not disclosed is not properly evaluated. Companies that do not know which items count toward the score have little reason to disclose more. Rep. Kim Yoon called on the NPS to disclose explanations of its evaluation indicators and to verify whether the indicators are valid.
A 169% return on the NPS's ESG investments was also cited, but the period it covered and the benchmark it was compared against were not disclosed.
If the plan to reduce investment in low-rated companies is actually implemented, companies will be sorted by ratings that leave 46.7% of environmental indicators out of the evaluation. Whether the NPS discloses its detailed criteria and fills the blank indicators will also affect how much its ESG ratings can move corporate disclosure.
