Legal and General has pledged to take action on companies not doing enough to combat climate change.

The fund manager, which invests around £1 trillion on behalf of its customers, said it would exclude climate change laggards from its Future World Fund.

It named China Construction Bank, Russia’s Rosneft, Occidental Petroleum and Japanese car maker Subaru among companies that need to make improvements on policies and actions around greenhouse gas emissions.

L&G’s investment management arm, LGIM, wrote to 84 companies that it had identified as being crucial to efforts to curb climate change. Almost three-quarters of those firms responded and 61 per cent agreed to a meeting with L&G resulting in “a number of positive moves by companies” including Toyota, Wells Fargo and Australia’s Commonwealth Bank.

As part of its pledge to help tackle climate change LGIM committed to vote against companies that have persistently failed to address the problem. LGIM will also vote against the re-election of the chair at these companies across all of its equity funds.

It said some companies have made significant progress since it began engaging with them in April last year. For example, Spanish utility Iberdrola, one of the largest electricity companies in the world, has called for ambitious EU emissions reductions and has lobbied for the EU to raise its carbon price. That reform is now underway.

Oil and gas major Total has stated that it will put a scenario of a 2C temperature rise at the centre of its strategy. A 2C increase is widely considered by climate scientists as the largest that the planet could bear without experiencing catastrophic and potentially irreversible climate change. Despite this, a number of fossil fuel giants continue to plan for a 4 of 5C rise.

BNP Paribas, the biggest listed bank in France discloses the carbon content of the power plants it finances. It also plans to reduce this in line with the global averages needed to reach the 2C objective. The company has also recently announced that it will no longer finance the development of “extreme” fossil fuels such as coal and tar sands.

Nestlé has set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, in line with the Paris Agreement. The company discloses these 2020 targets and how it is performing against them.

Meryam Omi, head of sustainability and responsible investment strategy at LGIM, said: “Climate change is a significant issue for society and investors, and we have a limited amount time to act. Our role is to ensure companies in different industries transition successfully, and therefore we are committed to helping them do that with our Climate Impact Pledge.

“Our overriding goal is to help protect our clients’ investments. We engage with companies to positively influence their governance, strategy and transparency. Divestment is a consequence but it is not the aim. We want to show that the transition to a low-carbon economy is possible and work with companies towards this goal.”