Top Performers Scottish Equity Partners

Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) is a specialist technology growth equity investor, operating across the UK and Europe, with over 21 years’ experience. Its portfolio includes a range of high-growth enterprise software, consumer internet and tech-enabled service businesses.

Its Responsible Investment Group, consisting of senior staff members, oversees SEP’s approach to embedding ESG into its investment processes through its Responsible Investment Policy. The RI Policy draws upon the UN PRI (to which SEP is a signatory), UN SDG, OECD Principles of Corporate Governance, and several other sources. SEP’s tailored KPI framework helps identify opportunities for development, set value creation objectives for ongoing board level review and share best practice across the portfolio group, such as SEP’s proprietary Growth Series events and Women in Tech Leadership network.

Catherine Simpson Chief Operating Officer

‘We encourage all our portfolio companies to promote a rewarding, responsible and inclusive culture for growth, believing this can support them to attract and retain world class talent and form a strong platform for value creation, including access to new markets, brand enhancement, new product development and employee engagement. We are ultimately aiming to build strong, resilient and sustainable businesses, with a focus on creating long-term value for all stakeholders and the communities in which they operate. We have established a Responsible Investment Group and embedded a culture of responsible investment across the entire investment lifecycle. This integrated approach has helped enhance assessment of prospective investments and increase engagement with portfolio companies on ESG themes. We work with management teams to incorporate ESG considerations into tailored value creation plans and by monitoring and recording ESG data across our portfolio, can regularly assess performance against agreed objectives. In all cases, responsible business practice has been pushed up the board agenda.

Our advice to firms starting out in their ESG journey would be to determine the appropriate blend of sustainability and governance for your own business. An ESG strategy is more likely to be successful if it is focused on the areas which can offer greatest impact for your firm. That is why we prepared our own bespoke responsible investment framework which covers the three key themes (Culture, Society and Governance) which we consider most relevant to the growth stage technology businesses we invest in.’