Defunding you life from fossil fuels
I'm going to cover Banks, Investments, Insurance Companies and Pensions. All are important, and some are very easy to change.
Much of the information in this post comes from Ethical Consumer Magazine https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ They've done some excellent articles on ethical investments, and if you're a subscriber you get full access to the stuff on their website which has all the information from previous issues in a very useful format.
They're a useful resource for a lot of information and I highly recommend getting a subscription.
So, where do you start?
You have several areas:
1. Change your bank.
2. Change your insurance company (Insurance companies have very large fossil fuel investments)
3. See if you can change your pension to a greener option. (best to do this BEFORE you retire, as you may not be able to do so afterwards)
4. Move your savings and investments.
BANKS
The very worst offenders are Barclays, followed by HSBC (First Direct is part of HSBC and M&S Money is 50% HSBC - so avoid those too) Citigroup, Lloyds Banking Group (Lloyds, Halifax, Bank of Scotland), NatWest Group (NatWest, RBS, Coutts) and Santander (Santander, Carter Allen) are all financing of fossil fuels - but they're not quite as bad as Barclays and HSBC..
The best bank for ethics by a fair margin is Triodos (not just climate change -other ethical issues too). (you have to pay a small monthly fee for a current account, but you are far less likely to get charged large fees for things like accidental overdrafts, etc)
Other good ones include:
Cumberland BS current accounts, Monzo app-based bank, Nationwide current accounts, Starling Bank current accounts
We moved our bank account from First Direct (large fossil fuel investments) to Nationwide - no fossil fuel investments. And we wrote to First Direct to tell them why they had lost our business.
INSURANCE
There's nothing like being in the business of assessing risks to convert you to seeing the dangers of climate change.
There are no clear winners in the insurance industry, they all have a way to go (they have big reserve funds which include a lot of money in fossil fuels). However, action is starting to happen, and there are insurers who refuse to insure coal power stations, etc.
I would study the Ethical Consumer guide to insurers to make your own choice.
We moved to AXA who are one of the better ones (they're part of the group unfriendly to coal, but still have progress to make elsewhere) - and saved money on our policy as well.
INVESTMENTS and PENSIONS
If you're lucky enough to have savings and investments - and this includes your pension - this is an area where you can achieve several gains all at the same time:
1. You reduce the risk of your investment losing a lot of its value - especially important if it's your pension. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/nov/04/fossil-fuel-assets-worthless-2036-net-zero-transition
2. There's nothing like taking away your money from an institution to send a very pointed message - but when leaving, it's important that you write to them to explain why you're leaving.
3. Some of the fossil free funds have really good rates of return.
4. You get the pleasure of taking a positive step that costs virtually nothing, takes very little effort, and helps keep fossil fuels in the ground.
There's a really good guide in Ethical Consumer, which shows you rates of return as well as ethical ratings.
The clear winners on fossil fuel free (and overall good ethics) are:
FP WHEB Sustainability Fund [C] WHEB Asset Management LLP and Triodos Pioneer Impact Fund [C] Triodos Bank UK Limited
We moved our savings to Triodos - https://www.triodos.co.uk/impact-investments. No fossil fuels and no firms that support fossil fuels either. Also very happy with the rate of return!
WHEB have recently made it much easier for small investors, so we may try their fund as well.
PENSIONS
The amount of control you have over your pension investments will vary. If it's a plan with your employers, then try talking to them about the risks inherent in long-term fossil fuel investments. Both to the planet and to the security of your income in retirement - if there's still a habitable planet left when you reach that age...
If you're organising your own pension, then firms to look at include: for workplace pensions is Nest (not-for-profit and carbon divestment policies) and for personal pensions Royal London (high scoring mutual).
Firms to avoid - Fidelity, Old Mutual Wealth, Virgin Money, Scottish Widows
But I would strongly recommend reading the Ethical Consumer guide in full. It goes into a lot more detail than I can cover here.
It costs less than a fiver a month to subscribe, and it's more than repaid my two year's membership by finding me a fund that was more ethical (in the areas I'm interested in) than the one recommended by my local Financial Advisor, and with a significantly better rate of return as well.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth where it has
comments.