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UKSIF Mission, Values and Operating Principles 

Our Mission

UKSIF is the membership network for sustainable and responsible financial services. We promote responsible investment and other forms of finance that support sustainable economic development, enhance quality of life and safeguard the environment. We also seek to ensure that individual and institutional investors can reflect their values in their investments.

 Our Values

  • UKSIF is a values-led organisation whose primary purpose is to achieve its mission.
  • UKSIF regards its members as its primary stakeholders but we also recognise a wider responsibility to civil society, in the UK and internationally, and to the environment and future generations. It draws its strength from the expertise and contacts of its members in financial service providers and other financial services stakeholders. While it operates similarly to a trade association, it does not exist to defend and advance particular member interests. It therefore looks particularly to its members' expertise rather than their individual or collective commercial interests in deciding how best to fulfill its mission. 
  • UKSIF believes in and seeks to stimulate and encourage the provision of a healthy market in responsible finance products. This includes encouraging a sufficient range of products to address diversification and differing values and financial requirements; and taking a lead in encouraging innovative new approaches to achieving social and environmental impact and supporting the identification and removal of market failures.
  • UKSIF supports transparency, effective governance and management processes, principles-based regulation and 'treating customers fairly". It believes that these should be achieved by voluntary action rather than compulsion where possible. However, if encouraging a voluntary approach fails, legal or regulatory compulsion is acceptable so long as sufficient attention is given to effective implementation.
  • UKSIF believes that, so long as accurate information is available, it is the role of customers and market to select preferred responsible finance strategies. UKSIF does not endorse specific strategies in preference to others (e.g. screening v.engagement).
  • UKSIF is willing to endorse or approve good practice standards in transparency, governance, management processes and similar. In doing this, it celebrates the positive rather than criticises the negative- it will "name and fame" but not "name and shame". Survey, awards and similar initiatives help to identify market leading solutions. UKSIF will undertake and endorse surveys, awards and similar where these "name and fame" rather than "name and shame".

Our Operating Principles

  • UKSIF operates in the “co-operative space” where a critical mass of its members wish to work together to grow and develop responsible finance rather than the “competitive space” where they compete for their share of the resulting market.

  • UKSIF’s core business activities are

    - to provide a membership network, delivering information, networking and other services to its members

    - to inform, educate and influence the public, the media, government and other external audiences

    - to undertake specific projects which advance sustainable and responsible finance

  • UKSIF obtains its core funding from membership, including the provision of membership services; as such, it seeks to achieve its mission in ways which secure the continuing support of a critical mass of members.
  • UKSIF seeks to build on its core funding from members by attracting project funding from sources compatible with its mission. These include sponsorship from members, charitable grants and government contracts.
  • UKSIF seeks to undertake a critical mass of activities that enable it to be a sustainable organisation that can deliver its mission. However, it avoids activities that are already being addressed effectively by other organisations. And where other organisations are more suitable and can be encouraged to take action, UKSIF prefers to be a catalyst rather than a competitor.
  • Corporate governance is within UKSIF’s scope in principle. However, UKSIF has decided that its work on corporate governance should be limited to the interface between governance and social / environmental / ethical (SEE) issues ie. SEE governance / corporate responsibility governance. UKSIF does not seek to develop a specific competence on conventional governance issues, as this is already well served by other organisations.

For more information on our current aims, see Strategic Aims 2007-2010. For more about us, see Board of Directors, Staff and Membership Directory.

To read more about UKSIF Strategy, see UKSIF Strategy 2011-2014.  

See also our Recent Publications.