Corporate Responsibility
While fund management is the core of our business, Polar Capital’s culture is such that we do consider how we can make positive change to the world around us. This filters through to recruitment, the environment and our impact on society as a whole.
Social Responsibility
We have partnered with a local academy, with the objective of forging a long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationship
The key objective is to fund two university undergraduates each year with full tuition fees and an annual living allowance. Each candidate will be allocated a Polar Capital mentor, will spend time in the office during each university holiday and will automatically have a place on the two-week Polar Capital Summer Internship Programme.
Many of these students went through incredibly tough times when schools closed during lockdown, with limited access to learning material and a lack of technology to facilitate remote learning. As a starting point to building this relationship, we have made a financial contribution to ensure the children have access to laptops and the internet and are able to continue their education in this challenging environment.
Charitable Giving
We believe we have a responsibility to make a positive impact on the environment and the communities in which we live.
We contribute a percentage of our profits towards charitable causes and encourage staff to nominate charities for us to support.
Each year we support charities that support causes that are important to members of staff or the business. While the focus of these charities may vary, over the past few years our contributions have been directed to causes such as community support, homelessness and child welfare, mental health, healthcare and education, and the environment. As we have previously, we tend to focus on smaller charities where we believe our contribution will make a big difference.
Polar Capital also has a partnership with Heal Rewilding, the UK charity, which has been actively engaged in several impactful initiatives aimed at restoring ecosystems and promoting biodiversity. The charity has focused on rewilding projects, including the restoration of degraded landscapes, reintroduction of native species, and creation of wildlife habitats. Our partnership with Heal has continued over the past year and we will support Heal again for 2025.
In addition to Polar Capital’s financial donations to charities, we offer an employee volunteering scheme. Under this scheme, employees can take up to two days leave per year to support charitable causes.
The Environment
Climate change, and the implications of global warming on our business and investments, has been an important area of focus for Polar Capital over the past few years.
For an asset management company, the majority of our emissions footprint comes from our investee companies or ‘financed emissions’, but we are also cognisant of our corporate emissions footprint and continue to review our practices.
For the past three years we have engaged a consultant to help measure our operational emissions footprint. The majority of our GHG emissions come from indirect activities, therefore we also voluntarily disclose Scope 3 emissions for relevant categories where data is available.
In 2024, as required by the FCA’s rules for asset managers, Polar Capital will produce its first full report based on the standards established by the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The TCFD aims to provide guidance for companies and investor on the disclosure of key information around climate-related risks and opportunities.
