I joined financial services in 1996 as a ’20 something’ year old woman. It was a different world. But not all of it was bad: some of it was good. A lot has changed since then but, in my opinion, the industry still has some way to go to be what it needs and deserves to be.
I’ve always tried to run Bespoke ethically, responsibly and in tune with what I believe are the right set of principles. I genuinely believe that being a good business is good business, and good businesses benefit everyone: clients, suppliers, our people, our partners, stakeholders and our planet.
Before our application to become a B Corp, we’d already set firm foundations and had always tried to ‘do our best’ but I wanted to take things a step further - by showing how much ‘doing things properly’ meant to us by being able to evidence our commitment to being more than just a profitable business.
I wanted our clients to know that their interests and our interests were totally aligned and for our people to feel their development and wellbeing was the backbone of our success.
I wanted our partners, suppliers and associates to feel confident in their dealings with us and for responsibility and sustainability to form part of our every day.
B Corp certification enshrines this in our business, providing a ‘mark of trust’ that we’re doing business in a way that meets rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. I like that.
Our journey to B Corp
B Corp certification addresses the entirety of a business’ operations. It covers five key impact areas:
- Governance: Code of ethics, financial information disclosure, whistleblower policy, mission and engagement.
- Workers: Career development, health, wellness & safety, tracking satisfaction and engagement.
- Environment: Environmental management system, recycling different materials, water and energy usage, air and climate.
- Community: Civic engagement & giving, diversity, equity & inclusion and supply chain management.
- Customers: Customer feedback or complaint mechanisms, regularly monitoring customer outcomes and wellbeing.
We started talking about becoming a B Corp in October 2020. Our first step was getting an initial B Corp score. We wanted a starting point.
We got to work. We began by measuring our entire company’s performance from the supply chain, policies and procedures, carbon footprint, diversity and inclusion policies, charitable work, corporate governance and all communications to understand where our business was. We identified how we could improve and deliver a more positive impact for the future.
This was a big job in itself but it allowed us to look critically at everything we were doing across all areas of the business and not simply at regulation; and, ironically, the recent consumer duty rules have a lot of similarity to the customer journey expectations of being a B Corp.
We then took stock. We looked at how we could improve our initial B Corp score and meet the required minimum starting score. We looked at what we did well, what we could improve on, where our gaps were. All of it.
We considered where we could improve on key aspects for everyone. How could we become better? Examples included how we supported and looked after our staff. We became a Real Living Wage employer. We already ran an apprenticeship program, but we extended the training and education support to all staff. We also looked at how we could better support our local community through job opportunities, volunteer days and sponsorship.
We worked on this for a good 15 months looking at everything we did top down and bottom up until we felt we had made significant improvements.
We then reassessed our impact. We took another step back and went again, looking in further detail at various aspects and fine-tuning various aspects, documenting what we would like to do to further improve in areas where we had scored lowest. We reviewed our legal requirements and made amends to our Articles of Association which legally enshrined our desire for our business to be a force for good.
It was a lot of work but hugely worthwhile and, 18 months after our initial assessment, we felt we were ready to move to the next step. We submitted our application for review. And then we waited.
Some months later, our application was reviewed, and the hard work really started. We needed to submit evidence of key areas of process and policy to evidence that what we said we were doing was genuinely being done and we had to respond to significant requests for further information to support what we were doing and what we intended to do next to further improve on our impact.
This included interviews and assessments. Some days it was like “Dragons Den meets the FCA meets the Apprentice”. Sometimes daunting, but always fun.
Nearly two years after starting our journey we were awarded B Corp certification in December 2022.
The whole process took around 20 months from start to finish and whilst I joke that I work 48 hour days and 10 day weeks the reality is that the amount of time dedicated to it was not dissimilar to the amount required for study for a couple of exams : around 200 additional ‘man hours’ and this was found by people who wanted to find it.
People who were dedicated to us achieving B Corp status and who, like me, like to see things done properly. It’s worth it. You just know that the outcome is going to be that you’ll be a better business so just crack on.
What next?
Like being a Chartered Financial Planning firm, B Corp doesn’t start and stop with being awarded the “badge”. It’s like FCA regulation with a requirement to continuously look inwardly at all aspects of our business to see what improvements can be made to make everything better for everyone.
We have set our own internal goals and targets for the future, such as continued improvement and an increase in the active support we can deliver to our community including education to our stakeholders, a review of our use of consumables and materials and how we can reduce the impact we have on the environment.
We continue to review our client communications, our processes to embrace technology where appropriate to meet our client requirements and all this dovetails nicely with our consumer duty obligations.
Has it changed how we give advice? It has changed how we look to deliver advice in terms of costs/value/using tools where relevant/reducing travel/ensuring documents are as clear as possible.
We also include information on other areas that a client should consider even if it doesn’t form the advice we are giving at the time to ensure they are able to make informed decisions and understand the impact of exclusions on the
advice /service we can provide. We have extended our processes to be more educational in certain aspects such as ESG investing too. Much of that is an extension of consumer duty.
But in terms of the advice we give then it hasn’t changed anything.
Would I do it again?
Absolutely; and I’d encourage others to join us. But it isn’t easy and it’s not a tick box exercise.
The piece of work we did around our Greenhouse Gas emissions was particularly tricky. Scope 1 was relatively straightforward as we don’t own company vehicles or premises. But the Scope 2 emissions requirement was very hard to monitor as we use rented offices and particularly as our head office is in an old building. However, we did learn a lot here and have certainly become more mindful of our impact.
The hardest part was, and continues to be, being able to account for our Scope 3 Carbon emissions: indirect emissions ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream' emissions which includes the processing of sold products, leased assets and investments. These tend to account for the largest part of our footprint and we continue to learn from the challenge of its management and reduction.
Apart from receiving the email telling us we’d been awarded B Corp Status, the best bit was our logo being on the front of the Coutts building in London during March 2023 for International Women’s Month. It was good to feel part of something.
Also, there’s personal satisfaction in the recognition that the policies we designed meet a higher standard in terms of governance, people development and client care; that we hadn’t just delivered a minimum standard. Recognition that we cared and that we gave a damn.
There’s also pride, especially when clients, our people and others recognise the commitment we’ve made and what it means. That it’s not about us but about them and everyone and everything that surrounds us.
