How Wren Sterling and our clients support sustainable projects

In late 2019 Wren Sterling launched an impact investing option for our clients offering ways for investments to be made in funds that are in line with environmental, social and governance criteria.

As we were building this, we began to question our own activities as an organisation; could we cut our business travel, or print less paper? Or conduct more meetings over the phone or video conferencing?

We already operate in energy efficient offices but we concluded that the bulk of our environmental impact could be addressed through technology, in particular internal and client communication, which is why we’re encouraging all of our clients to sign up to our Personal Finance Portal (PFP). Through using the PFP, all the key information we might have sent in the post can be quickly and securely accessed online. In some cases this will save hundreds of sheets of paper and all the associated costs that go with print and postage.

Supporting sustainable initiatives

For our part, we will donate £20 for every client who agrees to go paperless. Those donations will go towards sustainable projects taking place around the world and each of those corresponds to the UN’s sustainable goals, which is a feature of the investment options in our impact investing range. It is a globally-recognised commitment to channel funds into causes that need investment and this will create sustainable solutions.

Download our fact sheet

To find out more about our journey to support our clients and the planet in our handout.

Download

How you can help

As a client of Wren Sterling, you can sign up to receive your communications electronically and choose to invest via our impact investing route where your investments enable companies to continue the work they do. Or if you would rather not do that and just want to sign up to the PFP, the world will still benefit from your actions. Every quarter we will ask our clients and our employees to vote for the projects they want to support.

You can quickly sign up to the PFP by giving your email address to your adviser or by emailing pfp@wrensterling.com

Where our donations have been used

Our first donation was made in October 2020 towards projects that support the UN’s sustainable goal of “Life on Land”, which was voted for by our clients and employees.

Life on Land works to “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.”

These are the projects that we supported through client registrations for our PFP July – October 2020, offsetting 153 tonnes of CO2 in the process:

Ethiopian Forest Regeneration Cooperative

Utsil Naj: healthy homes for Mexico

Solar cooking for refugee families in Chad

The Nicaforest High Impact Reforestation Program

In early 2021, we offset a further 203 tonnes of CO2, supporting three projects aligned to the UN’s Sustainable Goal of Clean Water & Sanitation:

Safe water in Rwanda

Clean water access for families in Laos

Cleaner, safer water in Cambodia