Our sustainability credentials

Our purpose is to invest the Scottish Widows’ annuity fund to help deliver positive, real world change.

By investing our annuity funds to support clients across a range of sectors, we align to the Group’s purpose of Helping Britain Prosper and provide long-term funding to support the transition to a more sustainable, low carbon economy.

OUR NET ZERO COMMITMENT

Our targets
  • Scottish Widows have set out ambitious plans to achieve net zero across all out investments by 2050, with an interim target for halving emissions by 2030.  Full details on our approach to climate change (PDF, 4MB).
  • In 2021 we published our Climate Action Plan (PDF, 5MB) outlining our approach to achieving net zero, and last year we provided an update on our progress (PDF, 600KB).
  • Our Annuity Fund comprises both our Loan Investments and Shareholder Assets which are invested on our behalf by our asset manager in line with our Stewardship (PDF, 800KB) and Exclusions (PDF, 1MB) policies.
  • Every year we publish an update on our Stewardship activities (PDF, 8MB).
  • And we’re signatories to the FRC 2020 Stewardship Code, which sets out high standards for those investing on behalf of UK savers and pensioners.
  • We’ve invested over £450m in green energy infrastructure projects, including on and offshore windfarms, solar farms and smart metering.
  • Our Social Housing portfolio is £3bn, funding the provision of thousands of affordable homes for families across the UK.
  • We work with our clients to understand the impact of Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) risk on their business as part of our credit assessment process.
  • We report annual on the emissions from our investments.  This is included in the Lloyds Banking Group annual Sustainability Report (PDF, 14.5MB) (Pg 160 onwards) which details progress across a range of key metrics.
  • We are increasingly focused on our role as one of the UK’s largest pensions, savings and investment providers, in addressing issues relating to nature and biodiversity loss and in 2022 we published a report on our position on nature (PDF, 3MB) and our approach to deforestation (PDF, 2MB).
  • As well as emissions, we want to better understand the ‘Social’ impact of our investments.  In 2023, we commissioned specialist external advisory firm The Good Economy to develop an impact assessment framework for our Real Estate and Social Housing book and to undertake a full review of our existing investments.  You can read the full report here (PDF, 4MB).