Fleet Mortgages has outlined a new ESG policy statement with the steps the lender will take in order to meet its targets.

The buy-to-let (BTL) specialist lender has confirmed several central ambitions, which include minimising the impact the business has on the environment, and to make a positive contribution to all stakeholders including staff, customers, suppliers and those who live in and around Fleet, Hampshire.

Fleet Mortgages has split its policy into the three constituent parts of ESG. For the environment, aims include reducing the amount of carbon emissions caused by travel by offering staff the option to work from home, reducing the amount of electricity used, printing, postage, stationery and waste disposal cost, recycling more and different types of waste, and also offering green mortgage products to advisers and their landlord customers.

In the social element, the lender is committing to helping more members of staff obtain professional qualifications, supporting employees who wish to carry out voluntary work within their community or for a charitable organisation, filling vacancies through apprenticeship schemes or staff-introduced candidates, integrating employee well-being into health and safety; and balancing teams in respect of gender diversity in all management groups.

Furthermore, in terms of governance, the lender also revealed it is working towards a number of outcomes including having a “diverse and healthy mix” of non-executive and executive directors on the board, as well as the effective deployment of governance meetings.

Fleet’s co-founder and chief risk officer, Jannie Vermeulen, commented: “One of our core values at Fleet is that ‘we run a business we can be proud to work for’. This has been a core value since inception and ESG offers us the opportunity to embrace this value in different ways. An opportunity to be mindful of the impact our business has on the environment. 

“As one of the largest employers in Fleet it also means we want to make a positive contribution in our community, and we set the very highest standards in the way we conduct ourselves.

“Our ESG policy not only outlines what we want to achieve in these three areas but how we intend to go about it, how we measure our progress and the outcomes we ideally will get from that activity.

“This is not rocket science, everyone can make a contribution and lead from any chair. What we have done here is simply plotting a path to make meaningful contributions across the ESG piece.”

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