Home > Savings insights > How you can be ethically aware when investing

How you can be ethically aware when investing

In today’s world of stocks and shares, it’s not all about buying low and selling high – many people want to invest in a way that matches their moral values.

At OneFamily, we're committed to "doing the right thing" and are open about how we do this in our annual Inspiring Better Futures report. Inspiring better futures is our commitment to acting ethically, reducing our environmental impact wherever we can and giving back to our communities both financially and through volunteering.

We take pride in making OneFamily a great place to work and our customers and their communities benefit from our membership and charity partnerships initiatives.

We also look at how we invest your money and offer our ISA and Lifetime ISA customers the option to invest in a climate-friendly fund.

What makes a fund climate-friendly?

Climate-friendly funds incentivise companies to work towards reducing the amount of damage they are doing to the environment.

That's because we decide whether or not to invest in them based partly on the work they're doing to reduce their environmental impact. We re-score them regularly so if they change their behaviour they might get more or less investment from us.

How we decide which companies to invest in

If you choose to invest your ISA or Lifetime ISA in our Global Equity fund, 100% of the money you pay in will be used to buy shares in companies that meet our climate-friendly standards.

Our fund managers start with a list of around 1,600 companies and use a clever scoring system to rank them by climate-friendly criteria.

The companies that score the lowest within each industry are excluded straightaway – meaning we don’t invest in them. We also exclude companies that are involved in things like building controversial weapons or producing certain high-carbon types of fuel.

This strict criterion removes around 1,000 companies, but the 500 – 600 remaining don’t all get equal investment. We then buy more shares in the companies with higher scores and fewer in those with lower scores.

This results in a portfolio of companies that are working towards causing less environmental damage compared to the companies non-climate-friendly funds are likely to invest in.

If you choose to invest in our Global Mixed fund, up to 35% of your money will be invested in this way. The rest is invested in lower-risk, fixed-interest assets.

How are companies scored?

Our scoring system rates companies based on:

Green revenues – how much of the company’s profits comes from doing things that benefit the environment, like generating renewable energy
Adaption score – how prepared they are for climate change or how much work they’re doing to prepare
Carbon intensity – how much carbon emissions are produced for every £1 million the company makes
Brown revenues – how reliant the company is on the things like fracking to make its money
Fossil fuel revenues – how reliant the company is on using fossil fuels to make its money

Climate-friendly investing at OneFamily

Our Stocks and Shares ISA and Lifetime ISA both come with the option to invest your money in a climate-friendly fund.

When you open your product, you'll be able to choose which of our two funds you'd like to put your money into:

Global Equity

Global Equity invests 100% of your money in companies that meet our climate-friendly criterion, as described above. There is a greater risk of losing money with this fund as there tends to be more ups and downs with this type of investing but that also means you have a greater potential to make money than you do with our less risky fund, Global Mixed.

Global Mixed

If you choose Global Mixed, up to 35% of your money will be used to buy shares in companies that meet our climate-friendly criterion. The other 65% or so is invested in less-risky assets that make a fixed interest rate. That means there are fewer ups and downs with this fund, and a lower risk of your ISA/Lifetime ISA having less money than you paid in, but there is also less potential to make money.

Is your Child Trust Fund or Junior ISA maturing?

Your OneFamily Child Trust or Junior ISA will mature when you reach 18, which simply means that the money becomes available and you can do whatever you like with it.

If investing it in our ISA or Lifetime ISA sounds like it might be a good option for you, you can find out more below and, once you turn 18, you'll be able to simply move your money over in your online account.

Read about investing your Child Trust Fund in our ISA or Lifetime ISA

DO NOT DELETE

Please note: OneFamily's Stocks and Shares ISA and Lifetime ISA both invest your money in stocks and shares. This type of investing can mean the value of your account can go up and down. This is normal for this type of investment, but it does mean there is a a risk that you could get back less than has been paid in. Find out more about the differences between investing and saving.