The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a global call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure all people can live in peace and prosperity.
In aligning our sustainability strategy to the SDGs, we have chosen six of the Goals to focus on where we think we can have a genuine impact.
We established long-term objectives that are aligned with each of our six priority SDGs to show how we is responding to global issues such as climate change, inequality, injustice and poverty. In 2020, we established long-term objectives that are aligned with each of our six priority SDGs to show how we are responding to global issues such as climate change, inequality, injustice and poverty.
The Six UN Goals we have prioritised are:
- 1. No Poverty
- 4. Quality Education
- 5. Gender Equality
- 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
- 10. Reduced Inequalities
- 13. Climate Action
This goal aims to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. The target is to eradicate poverty for all people everywhere by 2030. Poverty is currently measured as people living on less than 91p a day.
Vanquis Banking Group Lends Responsibly and Acts Sustainably
Vanquis is committed to advancing financial inclusion through our purpose-driven approach. We do this primarily by providing responsible credit solutions and supporting our customers’ financial resilience.
We continue to invest in activities and initiatives that address key factors which may affect someone’s likelihood of being accepted for credit, through the Vanquis Banking Group Foundation. We make sure our colleagues have the skills to deal with customers with additional needs. We also support independent financial research, money advice and financial education.
This enables our customers, and others who might face financial difficulty, to recognise the barriers to financial inclusion. They can then overcome these barriers and secure a more positive financial future for themselves. We primarily contribute to this Goal by delivering on our Purpose and responsibly serving our 1.69 million customers through core banking services and Snoop, an app that helps individuals save up to £1,500 annually on spending and household bills.
We also support the financial inclusion agenda through our Foundation by providing grants to charities and specialist partners to address issues like customer vulnerability, product accessibility and financial difficulties.
For example, Vanquis has partnered with The Money Charity since 2013, and during this time our funding has enabled it to deliver 3,056 hours’ worth of financial education workshops to almost 76,500 young people. Throughout 2024, our support for The Money Charity enabled it to deliver 306 workshop hours to 6,560 young people with over half of these delivered to groups of ‘disadvantaged’ young people. The aim of these workshops, aligns with our purpose, as they provide young people with building blocks to sound money management, helping them to develop the skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviours they will need so they can make the most of their money throughout their lives.
We often post our work relating to these programs on our social media channels. Do take a look and meet some of the faces behind this work.
This goal ensures inclusive and equitable quality education and promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. The target is: By 2030, to ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes. It's all about improving access to quality early childhood development to increase the number of youth and young adults who have the relevant skills in literacy and numeracy.
We contribute to this SDG through the work we support with our education partners. Through our longstanding partnerships with National Numeracy, the National Literacy Trust and Leading Children we have supported a number of programmes which aim to boost the literacy and numeracy skills of children and young people. The Group has been a supporter of National Numeracy since 2018, supporting the National Numeracy Day campaign for seven years. In 2024, National Numeracy Day was held on 22 May and showcased numeracy in everyday life and help the nation to build confidence when working with numbers. On the day itself, and throughout May, our colleagues engaged in a range of activities which highlighted how essential numeracy skills are for navigating modern life, from managing personal finances to excelling in the workplace. This included engaging with schools to deliver numeracy assemblies and classroom activities to support children to think and be more confident about using numbers in the real world, building on our long-standing relationship with the Professional Darts Corporation to link up with National Numeracy to deliver a Bullseye Maths Challenge in honour of the day to schoolchildren at The O2 in London, and teaming up with National Numeracy Ambassador Bobby Seagull to create some videos which helped to explain some common financial terms. We also hosted a ‘Big Number Natter’ for our colleagues which provided them with an opportunity to talk about their experience with maths, and get advice and support on becoming more confident with numbers.
In addition, through our partnership with School-Home Support we have provided funding which has enabled its practitioners in Bradford and Kent to work with both parents/carers and children to make an assessment of the key challenges they are facing, and which are acting as a barrier to children attending school. The approach that the practitioners take looks beyond the school gate and works with families to understand and overcome the root causes of absence and improve attendance and participation levels. Our partnership has also sought to support families who face financial hardships as a result of the ongoing cost of-living crisis, coupled with increasingly stretched local services. Through the School Uniform Fund we established with SHS in 2022, its practitioners can provide a child with all the clothing they need to feel comfortable at school.
This goal aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. The target is: End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere.
We are committed to supporting diversity and creating an open and inclusive culture where everyone feels valued.
Our Target
Our commitment to improve gender diversity across the Group is underpinned by our commitment to the HM Treasury Women in Finance Charter. We became a Charter signatory, a government initiative to improve gender diversity in senior positions within the financial services sector, in March 2019, and committed to having 40% female representation in the Group’s senior management population by December 2026.
The Group’s senior management population currently has 34% female representation. The key actions we undertook throughout 2024 to support this SDG included: ensuring gender balanced shortlists when we recruit for senior leadership roles across Vanquis Banking Group. We also work in partnership with the recruitment agencies we use to ensure they are clear on our expectations regarding our inclusion and diversity commitments; continuing to nurture our professional women’s network to sponsor, connect and engage women across Vanquis Banking Group into and throughout their leadership journey; delivering our strategic initiative aimed at addressing gender balance within the Group’s Technology and Change functions. Initiatives are being delivered to create succession pipelines that will help to fill senior role vacancies when they become available; and continuing to adopt hybrid working models and enabling colleagues to work with greater flexibly, ensuring they have the support they need. This has also provided a wider talent pool with less geographical barriers.
Our diversity and inclusion programme is driven to large extent by our five affinity groups which are led by our colleagues and focus on the following themes: disability, LGBTQ+, gender balance, ethnicity and social mobility. In 2024, these groups collaborated to deliver various events and activity. Notably, the Gender Balance Group worked with Jayne-Anne Gadhia to host a ‘Time to Talk’ session on International Women’s Day which emphasised the importance of inclusion for everyone.
This goal promotes sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. The UN target is: Sustain economic growth in accordance with national circumstances and, in particular, at least 7% gross domestic product growth per annum in the least developed countries.
Our Target
By 2030, we will contribute to promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all by creating opportunities for all generations and protecting and promoting labour rights in both our business and supply chains.
We do this in a number of ways, one of which being our Foundation.
Social Mobility Business Partnership
We support this Goal by funding the delivery of activities and initiatives in the communities we serve via the Vanquis Banking Group Foundation. Through our longstanding partnerships with the Ahead Partnership and Social Mobility Business Partnership, and the relationships we have with schools and colleges in the communities surrounding our offices in Bradford, Chatham, London and Petersfield, we have delivered a number of sessions which engage with young people who face barriers or are underrepresented within our workforce, to build their aspirations, skills and careers knowledge and support them to think about what steps they could take towards realising their future job prospects. During the year, over 60 colleagues supported almost 200 students by working with our partners to deliver sessions on the roles that exist within our sector, goal setting and action planning, interview preparation and practice and CV writing.
This Goal aims to reduce inequality within and among countries. The target is: By 2030, progressively achieve and sustain income grown of the bottom 40% of the population at a rate higher than the national average.
Our Target
Whether it is because of their age / sex / gender identity / race / ethnicity / origin / disability / ability / where they live or what their economic status is, we will contribute to reducing inequality by building these capabilities to better identify, support and empower our stakeholders who may face inequality and exclusion.
How we do this
We also support this Goal, by providing funding to a range of projects through our community investment programme which seek to reduce inequalities. We aim to support local community groups to address a wide range of social and financial inclusion issues that are relevant to our customers and the communities where we operate. We do this via the community foundation partnerships we currently have with Bradford District Community Foundation, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Community Foundation, Kent Community Foundation and London Community Foundation. By working with our community foundation partners, we have the confidence that we are directing our funding to the places where it is needed the most. In 2024, through our four partnerships in Bradford, Kent, London and Hampshire, we provided grants of between £2,500 to £10,000 to grass roots community organisations. The grants will help organisations to address a wide range of complex issues, such as reducing inequality, exclusion and disadvantage for children and young people.
In terms of seeking to maintain an inclusive and diverse workplace at Vanquis Banking Group, we continue to do this via our Group-wide Inclusion Community, which comprises five aligned Affinity Groups focused on Disability, LGBTQ+, Gender Balance, Ethnicity and Social Mobility. These groups currently have approximately 70 active and representative members, as well as an extensive network of Affinity Group allies, and help to coordinate work across the Group to celebrate, learn and increase awareness around an extensive range of inclusive and diversity-related events. For example, in response to the summer riots, our Ethnicity Group sought to support colleagues affected by the events they witnessed in their communities and on television. Throughout the year, the Disability Group provided valuable advice to the business on creating an inclusive workplace for colleagues with disabilities and long-term conditions. Additionally, we hosted a webinar with the Bank Workers Charity during Carers Week, highlighting the challenges faced by carers and the support available through the charity.
You can read more on Inclusion and Diversity here or find more information on what we do on our social media channels.
Goal 13 calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. It is intrinsically linked to all 16 of the other Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To address climate change, countries adopted the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C
Vanquis Banking Group target
To achieve net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2040, support the UK’s transition to a net zero economy and take urgent action to tackle climate change and its impacts.
Our commitment to achieve net zero GHG emissions by 2040 (in respect of our scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions) is ahead of the UK Government’s net zero by 2050 target, and has been further strengthened by the carbon reduction targets we set in 2023 and which have been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).
During 2024, we continued to reduce our impact on the environment by improving the energy and resource efficiency of our operations and understanding and reporting the actual and potential impacts of climate-related risks and opportunities on the Group (see pages 22 to 34 of the Group’s Annual Report and Financial Statements 2024 for more information). We have also taken a number of important steps that support our net zero target. This has included setting SBTi-approved carbon reduction targets in line with the latest climate science recommendations necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and limit global warming to 1.5°C, well below 2°C.
Related pages
