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Our business principles

We aspire to be one of the most successful and progressive UK financial services companies. Our success depends on the trust and confidence placed in us by our customers, business partners, staff, the communities around us and society at large. We recognise that the long term interests of our stakeholders are best served by acting in a socially responsible manner, by good corporate citizenship, and by continuous improvement in all that we do.

We will ensure that our core values are embedded in our everyday working lives:

CARE
Customer Understanding
Accountability
Respect
Enterprise

We recognise our responsibilities to all our stakeholders:

Customers

We recognise that customers have a choice and that we must earn their trust and help them become more confident by treating them fairly and continually meeting their needs through high quality service, professional advice and value-for-money products. We will enable them to invest their money in accordance with their values and will strive to remain leaders in socially responsible investment.

Business partners

Our success depends on mutually beneficial, co-operative relationships, for example with financial advisers. We seek to do business only with partners who adhere to values and principles compatible with our own and will honour fully our obligations to all of our suppliers. We aim to manage our relationships with our business partners with a mutual understanding of our shared responsibilities.

Employees

We are committed to providing a fair, rewarding and enjoyable environment in which all our people understand and share the values and goals of the business and have the opportunity to realise their full potential. We will seek to align ourselves with high standards in employment practice and we are committed to meeting internationally recognised standards on labour rights.

The community

We aim to be a good corporate citizen and to make a positive contribution to society through participation in charitable, cultural, educational and recreational activities in the communities where we operate, encouraging community involvement by our staff, and taking environmental responsibility into account throughout our operations.

Wider society

We use our influence to encourage responsible practices on the part of companies in which we invest, and seek to practice what we preach. We contribute positively to the development of our industry, working towards a sustainable solution to long term savings, and will continue to encourage the adoption of high social, ethical and environmental standards across the financial sector.

Environment

We are committed to ensuring that the needs of our business, our customers, our business partners, our communities and our employees are met in an environmentally responsible manner. We will pursue policies and practices that seek to continually improve our environmental performance and contribute to the transition to a low carbon economy.

Living up to our principles

We will ensure we have policies in place to guide our employees in adhering to these values and principles, and will provide training and advice for our staff in doing so. All employees are encouraged positively to adhere to our principles. We will regularly take steps, including audit and review processes, to check that we are living up to our principles. We will periodically and systematically review the policies to ensure they address new challenges and issues that arise.

We believe that the interests of all our stakeholders require that we maintain high standards of corporate governance, including those stated below:

• We will ensure that the accountabilities and processes through which the organisation is controlled are clearly defined, regularly monitored and conform fully to the requirements of relevant legislation, regulation and accepted convention.
• We respect the spirit of the law as well as obeying the letter of the law.
• We respect the confidentiality of information held by the business.
• We are committed to high standards of transparency, and will report regularly and honestly on our performance - including our performance against the principles set out here - both internally and externally.

On the foundation of these values and principles, we will be true to our heritage and fulfil our responsibility to our stakeholders and to ourselves. We will continue to build a business of which we are, and will be, proud.

Last reviewed March 2011