PRI is an initiative launched by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and financial institutions on April 27, 2006. The principles call for institutional investors worldwide to "integrate consideration of environmental social and governance issues into investment decision-making". At the end of February 2007, the 63 investment institutions that have committed to the principles represented total funds amounting to some US$2 trillion.
The Principles for Responsible Investment can be described as a financial version of the "Global Compact" initiative championed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the World Economic Forum held on January 31, 1999. The Global Compact called on business leaders to work together with UN agencies, laborers, and civic society to support 10 principles in the fields of human rights, labor, and the environment. Secretary-General Annan stated,
"There is a disconnect between corporate responsibility as a broadly stated management imperative, and the actual behavior of financial markets, which all-too-often are guided primarily by short-term considerations at the expense of longer-term objectives. With only rare exceptions, the financial community has not sufficiently recognized or rewarded corporate efforts to respond to environmental, labor or human rights challenges, even though such factors can be directly material to corporate performance." Based on his concern about "the absence of a set of common guidelines that individual and institutional investors can use to assess risks and opportunities fully", he invited a group of leaders from the international investment community to develop a set of global best-practice principles for responsible investment. He also expressed his expectations for the principles; "If implemented, they have tremendous potential to more closely align investment practices with the goals of the United Nations, thereby contributing to a more stable and inclusive global economy."