Sustainability

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Policy

Our goal is to be a mortgage provider operating within a sustainable infrastructure, while having a positive influence on the sector in which we operate. Our core values have guided our ESG practices, which aim to drive growth and empower communities through our decision-making processes. Our aim is to identify critical ESG factors and ensure that they are considered and integrated into the way we conduct our business.

We aim to integrate ESG into our business by:

• Identifying and creating positive ESG impacts from our investments where possible;
• Identifying and minimising the ESG risks and negative impacts of our business;
• Incorporating structures and actions that place ESG at the centre of how we do business;
• Acting in accordance with applicable laws and regulations;
• Promoting environmental and energy awareness in our employees through participation and training;
• Monitoring our progress to ensure ongoing improvements in our environmental performance;
• Continuing to improve and modify our structures and actions and aligning with industry best practice standards.

Energy, Emissions & Waste

Our goal is to be a mortgage provider operating within a sustainable infrastructure, while having a positive influence on the sector in which we operate. Our core values have guided our ESG practices, which aim to drive growth and empower communities through our decision-making processes. Our aim is to identify critical ESG factors and ensure that they are considered and integrated into the way we conduct our business.

• We plan to use a green energy provider for future energy needs;
• We support the Cycle to Work and Taxsaver schemes which promote the reduction of car traffic;
• We minimise our use of paper and focus on identifying opportunities to reduce waste. We have introduced e-signatures software for both employees and customers, significantly reducing the need for printing;
• Our lending policies support the building and renovation of properties to reduce our borrowers carbon emissions, increase energy efficiencies and decrease household electricity and heating consumption and costs.

Update:
Dilosk has deployed real-time building sustainability monitoring across all our offices to reduce wastage and increase sustainability.
We now collect live data insights from all of our buildings - from places where we couldn’t get data historically - in order to track and improve our key ESG metrics:

Using this smart technology we gain an enhanced understanding of any potential inefficiencies in how we run our offices - allowing us to be one of the greenest financial services companies in the country.

We have installed wireless IoT devices all across our buildings to generate dozens of live monitoring points. Using big data analytics software we can now continuously generate sustainability intelligence from our offices. Data capture from these devices generates live environmental insights about how effectively we are managing our spaces with a mix of energy consumption, enviro-activity, weather and benchmark data.

The key benefits allows us:

• Compare building efficiency across our estate
• Gain granular Electricity & Gas monitoring to help us understand unnecessary peaks in our consumption
• Use luminosity sensors to identify unnecessary usage of lights
• Exploit live temperate and humidity monitoring to identify heat waste
• Track CO2 levels to ensure adequate office air flow in our offices

So now we can:

• Develop an energy consumption reduction strategy
• Understand - how/where, when/why energy is consumed
• Devise a list of Environmental Conservation Measures (ECMs)
• Regularly analyse the data to identify, correlations & anomalies
• Assess weekly & monthly reports so we can visualise trends & patterns
• Use the baseline data to identify ‘cause & effect’ in order to improve our ESG KPIs
• Use alerting against benchmark parameters to intervene in real time if needed
• Share the data to allow for knowledge transfer across the whole team
• Our Workforce and employment practices

Our Workforce and employment practices

Our Staff
Our employees are central to everything we do, and satisfaction of our employees is critical to the long-term success of our business. We will provide fair and equal employment and advancement opportunities to all employees with no discrimination on the basis of race, caste, colour, age, sex, disability, and socio-economic status of the candidate. We ensure a fair recruitment process that helps us identify and hire people with the right values, who are then encouraged and retained through a combination of financial and non-financial incentives.

We have an Employment Assistance Program (EAP) in place to support the wellbeing of all our employees;

An online health portal is also available for all employees;

We are committed towards providing an environment which promotes training and development opportunities to all our employees;

We recognise and facilitate the benefits of flexible working, helping employees to set up home-workplaces;

We will continue to encourage environmental awareness among our employees through appropriate communication and training programmes and ensuring that all employees understand our ESG policy.

Our Customers
Our customers are at the heart of everything that we do and we recognise that maintaining their trust and regard is vital for our success and longevity in a fiercely competitive market. Through our digital platforms and initiatives, we allow our customers the flexibility to access and avail of our services over any digital platform of their choice. We recognise that product and service delivery is vital for our business growth and regularly review our service levels and capture feedback from customers in order to continuously improve our offering.