Top Performers 6th AnaCap Financial Partners

AnaCap Financial Partners is a UK-based Financial Sector investor in the European mid-market. It has a focus on the information technology, fintech and financial services sectors and has an AUM of £3.9bn. AnaCap Financial Partners’ ranking is a result of its near-perfect performance in Responsible Investment and its social policies. It considers climate-related risk in line with the SFDR. Highlights of its social policies include in-house social targets, staff training on ESG and its own diversity and inclusion taskforce.

Joe Giannamore CEO and CIO

‘AnaCap believe that a sustainable and responsible approach should be at the core of our business, our investments and our culture. ESG compliance provides us with a welcome opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to sustainable investing. We also recognise that our investors’ needs in this area are steadily increasing and that their own stakeholders are demanding a formal adoption of sustainable investing practices.

Our commitment to sound ESG practices is consistent with our responsibility and duty to help our investors achieve their goals consistently. Including ESG as a bespoke focus of the preacquisition diligence process has enabled us to identify potential issues early on. We have found that taking early remediation action (if necessary) or otherwise just generally prioritising ESG factors early in the post-acquisition phase also leads to a much more embedded ESG culture within both our investment teams and portfolio companies.

For firms looking to start their ESG journey, it is important to first take a ‘lay of the land’ of your firm and its overall operational structure. Naturally each firm will have a varying degree of ESG resource and budget available to them and so what works for one will not necessarily work for another. It is important to have this framework in mind when designing your journey and to ensure that the corresponding goals are realistically achievable for a firm of your own size and stature. The second is to place sufficient emphasis on winning the hearts and minds of your colleagues on the importance of ESG.

ESG is relevant at every stage of an investment process and for all internal teams – you cannot go on this journey alone and that message needs to be understood by all internal stakeholders. The quicker that you have this ‘buy-in’, the quicker you can implement and make significant progress on your journey. Finally, the key for AnaCap has been to formally embed ESG factors into the investment recommendation committee process.

The investment team therefore must have completed ESG due diligence from the outset and they must include these findings and any recommended improvements in the investment pack in order to get the approval needed. This is what establishes the ESG foundation for the investment going forward and helps to get everyone into the mindset that ESG considerations are critical components of every thesis.’