Equitable investing

Investment and Portfolio

We want to change the way we make our investment decisions to ensure we consistently make investment decisions considering equity, diversity and inclusion factors. We want to contribute towards improving the equity, diversity and inclusion policies and practices of our fund managers and for positive impact outcomes to be experienced by a broader and more diverse group of people.

Actions we are taking

Equity, diversity and inclusion due diligence

We have developed an EDI DD framework to assess fund managers’ EDI practices. This has been rolled out across all new investments in 2024. We will incorporate feedback from this year and make the tool available on our website for others to use.
Diversity data collection

We collect and report diversity data annually from across our portfolio – see below for the findings. We also contributed to a Diversity Forum-led project to improve sector-wide data collection as diversity data collection is complex and fragmented.
EDI theory of change

We have developed an EDI theory of change to inform the activities that we prioritise across our investment and portfolio.

Lessons from our EDI DD framework

One year in, we have identified the following drivers and challenges for change on EDI:

Importance of setting the tone from the top as highlighted in the British Business Bank’s Finding What Works report.
A desire to make change internally first before applying this to the portfolio highlights an opportunity to apply learnings from one part to the other
Need for standardisation and internal data management systems to be able to collect and analyse diversity data of the organisation and the portfolio consistently and effectively

The data

Every year we survey our fund managers to understand diverse representation across our portfolio and assess progress against our EDI Investment and Portfolio Theory of Change. This year, we surveyed 34 fund managers and social banks in our portfolio (compared to 31 last year) and received 28 responses (compared to 27 last year), resulting in a portfolio coverage of survey responses by value of 72% compared to 77% last year. We also surveyed managers in our Treasury portfolio for the first time, increasing our total responses to 30 [1].
We used the Diversity Forum Data Project recommendations to update our annual EDI survey, as well as best practices from the Diversity Data Alliance, 360Giving DEI Data Standard, BVCA, and other organizations like BPC Capital, Ford Foundation, and Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.
The section summarises the key insights across our portfolio and provides a comparison against last year’s survey responses [2]. To explore the data in more detail and across more characteristics, please see the dashboards below including BSC’s diversity data.
Find out more about the methodology of the survey.

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[1] These have not been included in the survey coverage datapoint for comparability, but are included in the data analysis.
[2] Year-on-year percentage changes are calculated by rebasing the 2023 survey results to match the number of 2024 responses for comparison. The dashboards display the original, non-rebased responses.