Sustainability at Select Car Leasing
Strategy & Progress Report, March 2023
Helping our company, partners and customers decarbonise their lives, with a focus on fairness, transparency and support
Introduction
As the largest vehicle leasing broker in the UK, the way we run our business will have a direct impact on the environment.
We have roughly 70,000 vehicles on our fleet at the moment. Many of those cars and vans are still powered by an internal combustion engine (ICE). As everyone knows, ICE vehicles emit CO2 which is a greenhouse gas and contributes to global warming. In addition, diesel cars give out particulate matter which gets into the air and is harmful when breathed in.
In 2020, we created Select Electric, a sub-brand of Select Car Leasing. Select Electric is focussed 100% on accelerating the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs). Our goal is to outperform the market, year on year, and move as many of our customers over to environmentally-friendly, electric motoring as quickly as possible.
But we want to go further. Our sustainability measures extend beyond Environment into Social and Governance. This is the magic ‘ESG’ trio. A set of clearly defined criteria that we track and improve on an ongoing basis.
Social initiatives include employee support and training, gender diversity, product and service quality, and much more. Governance covers business ethics, external advisors, Boardroom best practice, among other areas.
Our sustainability actions and reporting will never be complete. We can always do more. We hope, as we build out our strategies and plans over time, that we can help all of our stakeholders live better, more sustainable lives.
James O'Malley & Mark Tongue
Joint CEOs
Select Car Leasing
10 March 2023
Our Approach to Sustainability
The word ‘sustainability’ means different things to different people. At Select, our approach to sustainability is guided by our 5 core principles:
1. Speed up the transition to electric vehicles
This is where we can have a major, positive environmental impact – quickly. The average petrol/diesel car emits 1.8 tons of CO2 a year*. For an electric vehicle, it’s 0 tons. For every customer we move from ICE to EV, we help avoid those 1.8 tons of CO2 getting into the atmosphere. It’s the equivalent of about 10 trees per car*. For every 1,000 EVs we lease a year, that’s a carbon saving of roughly 1,800 tons or 10,000 trees.
2. Engage with all stakeholders
Select Car Leasing interacts with many thousands of people a year. They fall into three main groups: our company, partners, and of course our customers. We want to make a conscious effort to engage with all of the people and businesses who are affected by what we do, and bring them under the umbrella of our sustainability objectives, to the extent that it’s appropriate for them.
3. Go beyond the environmental
While leasing electric vehicles will remain core to our sustainability drive, the social and governance aspects are crucial, too. We want our staff to be happy in their roles, building successful and fulfilling careers. We want to work with partners who share our climate and ethical ambitions. We want our customers to be treated fairly, and get the products and services that are right for them.
4. Have realistic short, medium and long-term goals
You can’t do everything at once. Time and resources are limited, and it’s important to be realistic and pragmatic in terms of what you can achieve over a given time period. That’s why we are setting short, medium and long-term goals. Some things we can do quickly and have an immediate effect. Others will require more planning and consideration.
5. Measure, Act, Report, Repeat
We have partnered with independent sustainability consultants to help us manage our goals. They are carrying out a comprehensive audit, which will result in a set of baseline criteria to measure against. We then divide action points into short, medium and long-term tasks. As we progress, we will report transparently to our staff, partners and customers. It’s a constant, positive process of renewal: measure, act, report, repeat.
* Core data sourced from the RAC, Car Analytics and Climate Consulting.
Auditing & Reporting Framework
Our sustainability partner is ESGgen Ltd. Bringing in external, independent consultants to measure and report on our sustainability goals means we can be confident we are reporting our achievements accurately.
ESGgen’s platform provides investment-grade ESG audits and accounts within a consistent, logical framework:
- Audits ESG impacts using 29 measures
- Calculates ESG impacts on 8 environmental, 15 social, and 6 governance measures
- Cloud-based platform secures data integrity and confidentiality
- Automates ESG accounting in line with International Auditing Standards (ISAE 3000)
ESGgen will analyse all of our environmental, social and governance goals that fit into an accounting framework.
However, some really beneficial ESG activities we are involved in – most noticeably leasing electric vehicles – technically fall outside the scope of an accounting-based approach. This is because when a customer leases an electric vehicle with us, most of the time the car itself is purchased by a third-party specialist funder. This means the car is not on our accounting books, but rather the books of the funder.
For this reason, we are taking a hybrid approach to sustainability reporting. We will measure and report on all of the accountancy-based criteria that ESGgen track, but we will also highlight our ESG achievements that are not monitored by ESGgen.
This combined, hybrid process gives a truer picture of what we are about as a company and how we can make a real improvement in ESG factors in the UK, now and in the future.
Progress & Plans for the Future
As a company, we have been focussed on environmental, social and governance issues from the very beginning. We’ve grown from our two founders working in a back-room in Reading in 2004 to the largest leasing broker in the UK employing 250+ people in 2023.
To achieve this growth and success, it has been imperative to focus continually on ESG issues such as the well-being of our staff, how we put in place management structures, how we interact with customers and manage their data, to select partners that share our customer focus, and so on.
We have managed all of these ESG actions to date in an informal, instinctive way. It’s worked, but it’s now time to formalise our objectives. That’s why we’ve engaged the services of ESGgen. They are currently carrying out our first audit and will report back to us in April.
We can’t wait to use ESGgen’s audit as a foundation stone to supercharge our ESG ambitions going forward. Their analysis will help us work out what we are doing well already and where we need to improve.
We will use this webpage to keep all stakeholders up-to-date on our environmental, social and governance progress. We look forward to continually strengthening our position in the UK’s drive for sustainability, helping people to lead healthy, climate-friendly lives.
