United Nations Global Compact

4finance joined the Global Compact as part of our commitment to the UN’s Ten Principles and our support of the UN’s Strategic Development Goals. Our participation helps inform our broader sustainability efforts, our desire to serve our customers well, contribute to the societies we operate in, and to act as a responsible employer.  

4finance has been a signatory to the UNGC since June 2023.

The UN has invited companies around the world to commit to its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to further Environment, Social and Governance objectives. 

Human Rights

Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and

Principle 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses. Through our daily actions and a range of policies and procedures, we actively support and protect internationally proclaimed human rights. Our human rights policy covers broad aspects of our behaviour, from employment rights through to our supply chain.

Labour

Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;

Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;

Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and

Principle 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. Freedom of association and collective bargaining are fundamental principles we safeguard and uphold for the people working with us. We fully support and protect the right of our employees to join or form organizations that advocate for and promote their interests. We recognize and respect their right to be represented by unions or other forms of representation within their respective working units. As an online consumer credit business, we carry very little risk of forced or child labour. We work to be an employer of choice and value a diverse workforce. Our code of conduct requires employees to act in a non-discriminatory way. The Group values diversity and will recruit and promote employees based on their suitability for the job and the Group’s needs without discrimination as to race, religion, national or ethnic origin, colour, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability unrelated to the task at hand or other grounds according to legal regulations. All stakeholders can use our anonymous and confidential whistleblowing service to address any concern with our practices. We prohibit retaliation or any other negative actions against a person who reports misconduct, whenever they make a report or provide information internally or externally.

Environment

Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;

Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and

Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.

Office space

As a primarily online business that does not deal in physical products, we have focused our efforts on scope two and scope three GHG emissions. In October 2024 moved our HQ and Latvian businesses to a new office – with a sharp focus on efficiency and sustainability. Our new office space has dramatically lower carbon impact due to its smaller size, more efficient systems and energy rating. We see the climate impact opportunities arising mostly from three factors: 

More energy efficient office space. Better insulation, requiring less energy for both heating and air conditioning. 
Smaller capacity/more flexible space to reflect changes in the business and working practices.
Greater opportunity to actively procure lower carbon energy suppliers.

We reduced the space used by approximately 50% and our new HQ is rated ‘A’ in terms of energy efficiency.  Our new office has the following energy efficiency rating: 

Building energy efficiency rating and class: A class, 41 kWh/m2 per year for Heating, 94 kWh/m2 per year in total.

Building primary energy rating and class: A+ class, primary fossil fuel 89 kWh/m2 per year, 107 kWh/m2 primary total energy.

Heating: 41 kWh/m2 per year, A class

Water heating: 5 kWh/m2 per year, A class

Mechanical ventilation: 10 kWh/m2 per year, A class

Lighting: 12 kWh/m2 per year, A class

Cooling: 25 kWh/m2 per year, A class

Total: 94 kWh/m2 per year, A class

The building complies with “almost 0 energy” requirements.

CO2 emissions rating, per year: 53.79 tCO2

CO2 emissions rating, CO2/m2 per year: 11.76 CO2/m2

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Carbon impact of new offices is now considered as part of our procurement process. We will review our use of office space across the business as the opportunity arises.

Web operations

4finance’s web operations are cloud-based, which offers significant energy and carbon savings compared to hosting our own operations on our own servers, as well as providing our stakeholders with greater resilience in the face of challenges such as pandemics, or the risk of service disruption due to problems at any one site.

Our cloud supplier AWS estimates 4finance’s annual emissions for FY 24 to be 0.028 MTCO2e, claiming to have saved 17.238 MTCO2e compared with on-premises hosted services. This is down from an estimated 0.045 MTCO2e for FY 23.
This figure is based on efficient hosting practices and 100% renewable energy purchasing by AWS. Since our previous arrangements also featured some renewables, this estimated MTCO2e saving figure is an upper bound, but the move has enabled us to significantly reduce the carbon impact of our web operations. We believe that this is the most carbon efficient way for 4finance to manage its web operations today. We will continue to look for efficiency in our cloud services.

We reduced the space used by approximately 50% and our new HQ is rated ‘A’ in terms of energy efficiency.  Our new office has the following energy efficiency rating: 

Building energy efficiency rating and class: A class, 41 kWh/m2 per year for Heating, 94 kWh/m2 per year in total.

Building primary energy rating and class: A+ class, primary fossil fuel 89 kWh/m2 per year, 107 kWh/m2 primary total energy.

Heating: 41 kWh/m2 per year, A class

Water heating: 5 kWh/m2 per year, A class

Mechanical ventilation: 10 kWh/m2 per year, A class

Lighting: 12 kWh/m2 per year, A class

Cooling: 25 kWh/m2 per year, A class

Total: 94 kWh/m2 per year, A class

The building complies with “almost 0 energy” requirements.

CO2 emissions rating, per year: 53.79 tCO2

CO2 emissions rating, CO2/m2 per year: 11.76 CO2/m2

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Anti-Corruption

Principle 10:
‍Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery

We have implemented robust anti-bribery and conflict of interest policies and established processes to identify, assess and mitigate risks related to bribery and corruption. We mandate detailed and regular training of all staff designed to prevent, report, identify and respond to the risks of corrupt practices.

We do not make political donations.

In addition to the Ten Principles, out of the 17 SDGs, we have chosen to focus on the following, that we feel are most relevant to our business.

4finance’s Strategic Development Goals:

Providing access to useful credit for the underserved is 4finance’s core service. With this comes a commitment to lend responsibly, communicate clearly and wherever possible, provide a soft landing in the event a person’s circumstances change. Credit used responsibly can improve lives. To avoid unaffordable lending we lend carefully, declining around 90% of new credit applications.

4finance’s core business has 56% female, 44% male mix of employees. Our code of conduct forbids discrimination in hiring and our treatment of employees. Gender is never a factor in our offer of financial services.

As a financial service business with a strong digital focus, we have a limited direct impact on carbon emissions, but we are taking action to reduce our footprint through: Careful use of digital resources (cloud-based web hosting). A deliberate move to low-carbon offices. Reduced office space. Flexible working, where possible, limiting emissions from commuting. More effective use of digital collaboration tools to reduce business travel.

As a provider of financial services we offer credit to those that are sometimes ignored by the established banks, often those with lower financial resilience, for whom timely access to finance can be a priority. As an employer we provide good jobs and meaningful work, with opportunities to progress.

We have active dialogue with regulators and other relevant stakeholders across our main operating markets to ensure our understanding of the relevant rules and best practices are current. We do not make political donations.

As an employer we provide decent work, encourage the development of skills and professional qualifications and contribute to economic growth across our operating markets. Improved access to responsible credit is associated with growth – we extend that access to those often denied it by established banks.

Our CEO letter of commitment Our UNGC Registration