Ethical Investment & Banking

Ethical Investment

Bangor University's investment portfolio is managed by UBS. UBS is committed to operating sustainably and to helping its clients invest in a manner that supports a positive social or environmental impact as well as producing good financial returns.

Bangor University has adopted UBS's sustainable investment strategy, taking into account the Sustainable Development principle i.e. that "we must act in a manner which seeks to ensure that the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". The strategy uses a combination of negative and positive screens to ensure that companies that may be harmful to society or the environment are excluded and to invest in businesses with responsible culture, practices and good governance.

Bangor University does not invest in controversial businesses, such as:

  • Weapons/Armaments
  • Alcohol
  • Gambling
  • Tobacco
  • Adult Entertainment

We do also do not invest in fossil fuels. In this way Bangor University contributes to a Globally Responsible Wales - Bangor University’s Declaration on Fossil Fuel

In 2021, Bangor University committed to publishing its annual investments publicly, these can be found at the bottom of this page.

UBS offers bespoke advice from highly qualified and experienced experts and have summarised their six-pronged approach to sustainable investing:

“UBS analyses more than 12,000 issuers with over 500 sustainability indicators per issuer sourced from multiple leading data providers. These indicators are aggregated into six core sustainability topics: pollution and waste, climate change, water, people, governance, and products and services. The bank's proprietary methodology for sustainability scoring is based on a systematic process of sourcing and processing best-in-class sustainability data, and aligning them to this six-topic framework based on industry best practice. This includes data adjustments and smoothing techniques to make the final scores as useful as possible in an investment context.

In addition, UBS sources indicators on actual controversies such as instances where companies have breached international norms (e.g. the UN Global Compact) or governments have breached UN, US or EU sanctions, or face any other ESG-related events which may affect their prosperity and economic development.

From a high level by following this detailed methodology the companies included in the investment portfolio are well-run, well-managed and well-positioned to exist for the long term. With regard to the inclusion of low carbon/renewable energy companies we find ourselves in a period of transformation whereby industries are becoming greener and those that make the change to low carbon/renewable energy are expected to succeed. As well as broadly aiming to include companies that are becoming more sustainable across the six topics, the investment portfolio excludes extractive fossil fuels."

Further information

Budgeting for Sustainability

The University supports sustainability through a number of budgets. Please visit this page for further details.