The open session takes place on Wednesday 17 November

Divest, Invest, Engage: How the University invests responsibly, open session

The University of Exeter has around £50m of endowment funds, accumulated since its inception, and given by numerous alumni, philanthropists, trusts, foundations and supporters. These funds are invested to produce an annual return, supporting academic posts, scholarships, research and student hardship across all our colleges and campuses.

Making sure we invest these funds in a socially responsible way, and ensuring we engage with the companies in which we invest to bring about positive change, is incredibly important to the University, and we are committed to ensuring that we make investment decisions responsibly and with integrity.

To ensure we continue investing responsibly we have updated our investment policy and since 2020, have been working with our ethical investment manager, Rathbone Greenbank. We’ve chosen this company because of their track record of delivering good financial returns, their well-developed screening methods to identify ethical performers, and because they are a leader in engaging with the companies in which we invest, proactively lobbying companies to be more responsible and ethical.

We want everyone in our community to have the chance to learn more about our investment policy and how we work with Rathbones to make responsible investments. All students, staff members and alumni are invited to an open session, which will provide a brief overview of how we have implemented our policy from Andrew Connolly, Chief Financial Officer, and an opportunity to hear from Rathbones Greenbank on their ethical investment approach. There will also be a Q&A session following these presentations. The session takes place on Wednesday 17 November, 4pm in the Alumni Auditorium, Streatham Campus, and will be streamed live using this Teams link. If you have any questions, or wish to submit a question prior to the event, please contact Finance Services.

Date: 1 November 2021