ESG

Our ESG Statement

At Law Debenture we believe ESG underpins our objectives of sustainable long-term returns for our shareholders, delivery of long-term objectives for clients of our Independent Professional Services business, as well as promoting behaviours among our workforce that are aligned to our corporate values.

ESG issues are integrated into our investment analysis and decision making as we believe it delivers a resilient portfolio and better outcomes for our shareholders, community and the environment.

What does this look like in practice?

We understand that there are areas where we can make a real impact and we focus on aligning our actions and behaviour to these. This has guided our ESG activity to date.

2022 was a significant year in Law Debenture’s ESG development:

  • Regular ESG Committee meetings; 11 held during the year
  • Published our Environmental Policy
  • Published our gender pay gap summary
  • Published our first voluntary TCFD (Available in the Annual Report pages 51 to 53)
  • Agreed employee diversity targets and thresholds
  • Continued engagement with ESG rating providers including improvement to a third quartile ranking from Refinitiv – an independent data analyst – indicating a good relative ESG performance and above average degree of transparency in reporting material ESG data publicly

In 2023, we are committed to make further change happen by taking more action and enhancing the availability of our ESG information in the public domain by:

  • Continuing the development of our TCFD disclosures for 2023 year end
  • Increasing our Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives
  • Adding further content to the ESG section of our website

In addition, LawDeb has four key values that drive our commitment to shareholders, clients and employees. These are:

  • Better Together
  • Make Change Happen
  • Believe It’s Possible
  • Never Stop Learning

We will update this page regularly with examples of the actions we have taken to live our values, how we ensure ESG is a consideration in these and what is next for LawDeb's ESG journey.  

Select ESG highlights

 

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Our Working Environment

Delivering Good Governance

We Make Change Happen

We are leading by example with Law Debenture Corporation p.l.c. being ranked first in the financial services category of the FTSE Women Leaders Review and second overall. 

In March 2023 we were shortlisted for the INSEAD Alumni Balance in Business Award. The results will be announced in May. 

We have improved to a third quartile ranking from Refinitiv – an independent data analyst – indicating a good relative ESG performance and above average degree of transparency in

reporting material ESG data publicly. Of particular note is our 98% score within the workforce category which looks at how we treat our employees and the opportunities we offer them.

The very nature of our IPS  business is to support our clients, many of the UK’s leading organisations, with their governance requirements, thus ensuring future stability.

Our Pensions Trustee and Pegasus Executive Teams works to deliver the best outcome for members through agile working around investments and deep understanding of regulation. This expertise allows them to make a material difference to the 200+ schemes on which they work, supporting the pensions of over 10% of the UK population.

Where we act as Corporate Sole Trustee we have introduced an ESG policy which sets out how we work with clients and stakeholders around ESG considerations.

Safecall – our whistleblowing and investigations  business – supports clients to both encourage their workforce to speak out/up and in investigating whistleblowing reports, to allow them to make real cultural change that sets the precedent for their respective industries.

From Green Bonds to endorsing standards in social housing, our Corporate Trust team has ESG on the agenda in a variety of ways.

As a team it bucks market trends by having 60% women senior manager team.

Our Corporate Secretarial Service team sit in the boardrooms of the UK’s largest organisations, supporting their own diversity and representation, to ensure they are not only complying with regulation but innovating how they operate to ensure a sustainable  future.

Better Together

Our Gender Pay Gap Summary demonstrates our commitment to diversity and, whilst we have work to do, we have a positive story to tell. For example our current mean gender pay gap is 13% compared to 27% for our industry.

We have a wider Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy which explores how we can, as with gender, buck industry trends and benefit from a diverse workforce. 

 

We invest in our culture to ensure our work is engaging and our workforce engaged. We have completed a project to truly understand how our people feel about the business and what they want to see. And we have actioned many of these changes. For example:

  • We run ‘Culture Week’ as an annual event for employees: it’s a chance for us all to review the work we have done, agree steps for the year ahead, continually challenging ourselves to be better.
  • We encourage and support employee run initiatives, including the ESG, Charity, Sports & Social Committees and Book Club.

Believe It’s Possible

On a micro-level we ensure that the buildings in which we have offices have ESG firmly on their agendas and our Environmental Policy supports this.

We work with external organisations, for example:

  • Providing internships for Employ Autism, Greenwich University mentoring – supporting social mobility for first generation university students by launching our mentoring programme to inspire and equip them for their future careers
  • Providing workplace training and hands-on experience for placement students

Never Stop Learning

We have employee programmes launched in 2022, such as the Leadership Programme and Landmarks programme. These support employees with a range of professional and personal backgrounds with their personal development and encourage career progression and longevity.

We have an 134-year heritage of delivering peace of mind to clients. Every day we work to ensure this remains our focus and that each client can trust us to guide them through increasingly complex regulation and governance requirements.

To deliver this we have expert teams who follow learning & development programmes, work collaboratively and share knowledge on a daily basis.

Examples of ESG across LawDeb

Click on the plus sign to read more examples of how we incorporate ESG across LawDeb. 

LawDeb Lens

LawDeb is pleased to continue to host its annual amateur photography competition, with entries received from investors, clients, industry contacts, referral partners as well as staff. The 2021 competition categories were based upon our long lived but newly articulated LawDeb values; for 2022 we challenged entrants with a new set of categories which are equally important to us, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG).

In our continuing journey and focus on the importance of ESG we were confident that these broad categories would yield an exciting variety of images and styles: this has certainly proven to be the case. The conversation and consideration of ESG principles this event has encouraged, internally and externally, has also been pleasing.

See the latest on the Lens competition here.

 

Our Policies

Case Studies from across LawDeb

Corporate Trust: In 2022 SEGRO plc, launched a Euro1.15billion unsecured Green Bond, proceeds of which will principally be used to finance or refinance Eligible Green Projects as outlined in the SEGRO Green Finance Framework. It was the Corporate Trust team’s pleasure to be involved and support this issuance as Trustee on SEGRO Plc’s EMTN programme: pleased to continue to build our credentials in the green and sustainable financing markets.

PensionsHow we tackle Diversity, Equality & Inclusion (DEI) on our Corporate Sole Trustee Pension appointments. Read here

Pensions: How we tackle ESG on our Corporate Sole Trustee Pension appointments. Read here

Safecall: We have variety of case studies at www.safecall.co.uk 

 

Meet the ESG Committee

Profile image for Vicky Skaife

Vicky Skaife

Group Risk, MLRO and ESG Manager

London, UK

Read more
Profile image for Chancelle Blakey

Chancelle Blakey

Business Development Manager, Safecall

London, UK

Read more
Profile image for Lily Frost

Lily Frost

Associate Director

London, UK

Read more
Profile image for Charlotte Greer-Read

Charlotte Greer-Read

Senior Finance Associate

London, UK

Read more
Profile image for Natalie Winterfrost

Natalie Winterfrost

Director

London, UK

Read more