Environmental Social Governance

Our people

Alan Boswell Group is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to ensuring all current and potential future employees, customers, and the public are treated no less favourably, and not unlawfully discriminated against, because of age, disability, race, religion, belief, gender, or sexual orientation.

The aim is for the Group to be a representative of all sections of society and for each employee to feel respected and able to give their best. We have clear and fair terms of employment and remuneration, and routinely measure gender pay across the Group to ensure that we are paying a fair wage for each role and its responsibilities. You can read our Gender Pay Gap Report here.

Providing a safe working environment is an important part of protecting our employees’ physical and mental health. Education, assistance, and resources are available to all employees. We recognise that work/life balance is important and adopt a flexible approach to ways of working where possible. We also acknowledge that our culture and ethos play an important role in the health and wellbeing of our employees; we encourage our leaders to lead by example, all staff to treat each other with respect, show appreciation, and share our successes.

Our people are our greatest asset, which is why we invest in providing resources for continuous learning and development for all staff. This includes things like funding qualifications with professional bodies, our apprenticeship scheme, regularly reviewing training requirements with staff, and encouraging staff to explore their own professional development.

Our clients

Our social responsibilities extend to our clients, suppliers, and contractors. As such, we encourage responsible business policies and practices between the Group and our suppliers and contractors for mutual benefit.

Our employees uphold our values of integrity, honesty, respect, and fairness in all our actions, including with clients. In the event that a client is unhappy we do our utmost to listen to them, register their complaint, and act on any feedback while working to resolve the complaint. All complaints are reported to the board so that there is complete clarity across the Group.

Our client-facing employees undertake vulnerable customer training so that we can provide additional support where required, and we have a number of ‘Vulnerable Customer Champions’ in our front-line teams. As a Group, we proactively seek feedback from our clients through Feefo and Trustpilot.

Our community

The Group has always looked to support as many charities and those in need as possible. For over 30 years we had always maintained a ‘Charity of the Year’ – a local charity that we would support through fundraising activities and an annual donation. For many years this was the Big-C.

However, as the company grew it became apparent that we could, and should, do more. The Alan Boswell Group Charitable Trust (ABGCT) was set up in 2019 with the aim of making a difference in the communities in which we operate, through distributing a percentage of company profits to local good causes.

Employees are encouraged to take a proactive role in the Trust; staff regularly recommend charities who have a cause that would benefit from funding, staff fundraising efforts are match-funded, and the Trust committee is made up of staff from across the Group.

You can find out more about The Alan Boswell Group Charitable Trust on the link below.

The Alan Boswell Group Charitable Trust

Alongside the Trust, we also aim to support our communities through:

• Providing financial education for young people at schools and education establishments, attending careers fairs, conducting mock interviews with students, and assisting with CV writing.

• We are corporate sponsors of Norwich Theatre Royal and have previously funded an exciting access to theatre project benefitting local primary school children. We are also corporate partners of Norwich’s Sainsbury Centre, supporting art exhibitions.

• We run our own apprenticeship programme and, by linking with a cluster of local schools, this informs students of pathways into financial services environments. We currently have a number of apprentices working across the business.

• The Group sponsors numerous sports teams in the counties we operate in, across football, cricket, rugby, and golf, for a range of age groups and abilities.

• In 2022 the Alan Boswell Group Prostate Cancer Research Fellowship was established, in partnership with the University of East Anglia (UEA), to help improve diagnosis and men’s experience of cancer treatment.