Pollen Street Capital (Pollen Street) is delighted to share its Annual ESG report. The report highlights the Pollen Street’s progress against its targets and impact agenda over the last year, including developing a proprietary data model to rank and score investments and announcing that the firm is now carbon neutral.

The report also showcases examples from around the Pollen Street portfolio of Impact in Action, where investments are making a tangible difference to the industry, society, and the environment.

Among the focus areas covered in the report, key highlights from the past year include:

• Achieving target to be carbon neutral by 2022: Pollen Street is thrilled to announce that it has met the target set out in its ESG Report for 2020 and is now carbon neutral. The carbon footprint of Pollen Street Capital reduced in 2021 and residual carbon emissions have been removed through verified offsets.
• Advancing DE&I as an industry role model: Pollen Street published the results of its second internal DE&I survey in this year’s report. The findings showed 64% of the firm are state educated and 17% are from ethnic minorities. Additionally, 26% of PE portfolio ExCo members are now women. The firm is also recognised on an individual and company level at the FTAdviser Diversity in Finance Awards with Lindsey McMurray named Diversity Champion of the Year and the firm Highly Commended in the Championing Women’s Equality Award.
• Measuring what matters: In 2021 and into 2022 Pollen Street developed a proprietary ESG data model that allows the team to rank and score investments using 50 data points from each portfolio company. This scoring enables Pollen Street to set targets, measure progress, and design improvement plans.

In recognition of these efforts Pollen Street Capital was named “Best Responsible Alternative Investment Team UK 2022” by Capital Finance International magazine for the second year running.

Lindsey McMurray commented: “As a purpose-led asset manager it is so important to us to understand the impact we have on our industry, society and the environment. In the last 12 months we have expanded our ESG data collection across our firm and portfolio and have developed a proprietary scoring mechanism. This means we are better equipped than ever to track and build on our positive impact.”

Pollen Street Capital is a signatory of the UN Principles for Sustainable Investment and recently became a member of the Initiative Climat International.

Find out more: https://www.pollencap.com/responsible-investing/