Governance

As a business authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), we are governed by laws, regulations and rules of conduct to which we must adhere. Our experienced compliance team monitors and ensures our adherence, including through regular staff training and assessment.

Transparency is vital to our culture. We will always decline an opportunity where we have hesitations about its integrity rather than expose our clients, partners or ourselves to unnecessary risk. To ensure extra rigour in our transactions, our private equity investments and property finance loans must also receive approval from our investment or credit committees.

Our risk, compliance, and legal teams are heavily involved in our investment and lending decisions and enact rigorous research before any transaction is approved. To deliver further transparency, we also produce periodic due diligence questionnaires about each of our open offers. In addition, our open Venture Capital Trusts are listed on the main list of the LSE, and some of our offers are on a panel with several financial adviser groups, who run their own detailed due diligence processes.

Environment

Having moved into a more energy-efficient office in 2019, we used this opportunity to review our environmental practices and strengthen our policies on recycling and use of energy, materials and resources. Over the past five years, we have focussed on minimising our use of hard copy literature and issuing digital documents internally and externally whenever possible.

To support this, in 2020, we implemented a digital application system for all our investments, ensuring this process can now be completed without hard copy requirements. We also encourage public transport use for external meetings. In addition, we provide bicycle parking facilities for employees and have an attractive ride-to-work scheme to encourage cycling amongst our teams. We also look at the environmental behaviour of the companies we invest in and lend to, taking note of their green impact and assessing this against our ESG scorecard.

Marketplace

Each of our three business areas has its ESG policy tailored to its activity and marketplace to ensure we are as effective in our ESG approach as possible. Each business area is responsible for assessing the sustainability and supply chains of the companies to which it provides investment or finance, ensuring alignment with our ESG principles. As regulated businesses, our investment offers must comply with relevant regulations to ensure they are responsibly structured and transparent. We also have internal risk, legal and compliance teams to monitor this.

Our Compliance team and senior management review our marketing communications to ensure we responsibly market our offers. In addition to our regulatory requirements, we also adhere to the Modern Slavery Act and conduct rigorous due diligence checks on the companies and individuals we work with. We also provide extensive due diligence questionnaires to help financial advisers ensure our offers meet their clients’ investment needs. We also have a dedicated Investor Services team who communicate regularly with investors and are on hand to answer any investor or adviser queries.

Workplace

Ensuring a strong and values-based workplace culture is critical to us, and we are intentional in continuing to work hard to deliver a supportive and inclusive culture for our employees. We believe this has a trickle-down effect across all of our activities and impacts the experience of those who invest with us or receive investment or finance from us. We are committed to fostering a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture across our organisation - where everyone is treated respectfully and fairly - and to look after the welfare of our teams. To achieve this and a host of other initiatives, we provide a range of training - including on well-being, values, diversity and inclusion - which external experts in their respective fields deliver. As part of our company’s evolution, we regularly reflect on and assess our performance in these areas.

Community

We strongly believe that our responsibility to support others extends beyond our employees and the companies and individuals we work with. Community has a far broader meaning, and we are committed to making a difference to wider communities through a range of initiatives. We have an active charity committee, whose fundraisings are further supported by the company.

In recent years we are proud to have supported charities including Shooting Star Children's Hospices and Kids Out, with employees taking part in marathons, step challenges, giving trees and sweepstakes to raise money for these causes. We are also proud fundraising partners with British Ukrainian Aid. We believe strongly in broadening access to financial services and as such have worked hard to provide work experience and internships to people who may not otherwise have a route in (including inner city schools). We also partner with IntoUniversity, the Cambridge University Women’s Network and 10,000 Black interns.