Investing

Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) factors are key to the assessment of the sustainability and societal impact of an investment in a company or business. The sort of issues that may be taken account of in each area are: Environmental (greenhouse gas emissions, water & renewable energy), Social (Human rights, community relations, labour relations, modern slavery) and Governance (Board and management quality, financial reporting, bribery and remuneration).

No – the TPO Investment Team do that bit. They make sure that the portfolios are well designed and achieve the growth targets they set out.

Passive investments closely track the performance of major indices such as the UK 100 index and our portfolios have exposure to many leading companies around the world. Passive investments help to keep costs low.

Bonds are debts issued by either government or companies. Whilst the expected returns from bonds tend to be lower than equities, they do an important job of diversifying risk. In the case of government bonds they quite often move in the opposite direction to equities in times of stress and so can help portfolios to weather those periods. You will have more bonds than equities in the lower return and lower risk portfolios for this reason.

An equity is a share in the ownership of a company and whilst it can deliver higher returns than bonds, equities also bear higher risks and so can move up or down more in value.

Typically, the longer the period you have to invest, the more time you have to compensate for fluctuations in the market.