Investment Ethos Statement

NHS Lothian Charity’s vision is: Making healthcare better, together. We are here to help NHS Lothian provide outstanding care and support for its patients and their families. We help create opportunities, enable innovation and transform healthcare for all our communities.

Our expertise, experience and resources mean we can target support that helps us achieve our mission of having a positive impact on health and wellbeing across Edinburgh and the Lothians.  

We also believe that responsible business practices are essential for delivering this mission and, for this reason, we ensure all our investments adhere to a suitable standard on environmental, social and governance grounds, whilst contributing to our overall financial objectives. We combine responsible, sustainable and impact-driven investments that aim for both a sustainable financial return and a measurable positive impact on health. Our philanthropic activities aim to deliver positive impact. 

Our spectrum of approaches

As an investor, we choose not to invest directly in any companies involved in tobacco or alcohol production, or gambling-related companies, due to their negative impact on health and we screen the underlying securities of pooled funds to ensure no more than 5% of exposure. We also recognise that we can support businesses which further our charitable mission and therefore include an allocation to investments with a focus on healthcare, innovation and wellbeing within our portfolio.

Furthermore, we recognise the existential threat posed to human health by climate change and have thus implemented a climate strategy which excludes the worst contributors to global emissions and proactively invests in climate solutions. In 2022, we formally excluded fossil fuels in our investment policy, having gradually divested from coal, oil and gas over the previous decade. In 2023 we signed up to the Funder Commitment on Climate Change.

As a long-term investor, we have agreed an overarching target to align our investments with the 2015 Paris Agreement, thereby committing to help limit temperature rises to no more than 1.5%C by 2050. We have committed to achieve net zero in our investment portfolio by 2050, with the expectation that all of our strategies and pooled funds will be on a pathway to achieving net zero by 2040 (based on the Net Zero Investment Framework alignment methodology). As an interim target, we expect all of our listed equity and credit strategies and pooled funds to have committed to aligning to net zero by 2030. We intend to honour this commitment by avoiding assets with the very worst climate credentials, ensuring our Investment Managers are engaging with our underlying investments, and actively allocating to climate solutions. We will continually review the policy and targets in light of developments, with an ambition to bringing the target date and scope forward as methodologies evolve and the investment opportunity increases, whilst balancing return objectives.