Why did we set out to become a B Corp? It made sense to us. At Path Financial, we only deal with clients who want their money to make a positive impact. We invest in companies that follow best practices and processes, with low carbon footprints and that strive to reach solutions for both people and planet.
It was less about getting a badge and more about demonstrating that we’re not just advising clients on how to have a more positive impact, but that we’re walking the walk too.
Achieving B Corp status is a must for a firm like Path – it would be quite worrying if we couldn’t achieve it or align ourselves to the premier accreditation. We like to practice what we preach.
In terms of doing the actual registration, it was as simple as going online and doing an assessment without any commitment. The assessment highlighted areas we needed to improve and things we needed to think about, as well as areas we didn’t need to worry about.
We spent a few hours scrolling through the online B Impact Assessment to get an overview of the criteria and to help us understand the areas where we should focus our attention and seek to make improvement, whether that was on our own HR policy or environmental standards. From this starting point we were inspired to complete the full assessment to become an officially recognised B Corp.
We decided to make it a key topic to focus on, as it was important to us that we did it and did it well. The main thing for us was getting a management-level person to execute our B Corp journey, who could oversee everything and really devote themselves to the cause, so as Path’s general manager, Richard spent a lot of time looking at what needed changing, drafted an action plan, and decided whether we could deliver what we did need to change.
We evaluated companies we were working with to make sure they were working in ways that aligned with our values, as well as looking at who is represented across our business – it was really important to us that we were diverse and inclusive, as it is widely known that the finance industry doesn’t have a lot of either.
Being regulated officially by B Corp really helped us, as topics such as governance and due diligence were already part of our process, but they are now even more important – we were doing quite a lot already that made the B Corp journey a bit easier.
Holding ourselves to the highest standards
We rethought our suppliers to make sure we had the most robust options in place. We implemented a green purchasing policy, which is our list of preferred suppliers and sees us typically using other B Corps for anything we outsource. We also had more due diligence around suppliers as a result, especially when it came to going through supplier lists, documenting and comparing them. This way of doing things is slightly more time consuming, but it means we are holding ourselves to the highest standard.
