Case Study - Options
Options is the leading global provider of hedge fund technology, financial technology managed services and IT infrastructure services and is based in London, UK.
Bregal Responsible Investment Report - 2017
Options is a leading provider of cloud-enabled managed IT services, offering front to back office managed infrastructure to financial services customers globally including desktop, colocation, application hosting services and technology consultancy services. Over 200 firms globally leverage the Options platform, including the leading global investment banks, hedge funds, funds of funds, proprietary trading firms, private equity houses and exchanges.
Options operates out of seven regional offices and over 30 data centres in financial cities around the world. Since the company offers managed services for production critical infrastructure, including colocation and complex application environments, a global footprint is integral to serving its customer base effectively. As such, Options is organised to provide secure access to its environment in the key financial sector regions where its customers and major exchanges are located. Facilities are leased from strategic data centre partners in-region including Equinix.
Sector: Financial technology managed services and IT infrastructure services
Head office: London, UK
ESG industry relevance
Options operates within the broader IT infrastructure industry and manages hardware on behalf of its clients. While the company does not directly own any data centres, the industry is a significant energy user. Currently, data centres consume up to 3% of all global electricity production while producing 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. The migration to the cloud is driving the need for more data centre capacity, which in turn is increasing energy consumption. Options has an active dialogue with its data centre partners to reduce emissions as much as possible.
Options employs more than 190 individuals and has developed an ESG focus surrounding reducing energy usage, improving workplace culture and diversity, and instituting recycling programmes in its offices.
Material issues:
Data centre usage and carbon footprint
Employee culture
Focussed on offering career opportunities to postgraduate workers
Emphasis on energy efficient lighting and recycling at its offices
Options continues to focus on maintaining and improving our culture of employee fulfilment and environmental sustainability, which are both imperative to our long-term success.
Data centre usage and carbon footprint
Options operates out of over 30 data centres around the world. As the company does not own any of these data centres, management has a limited impact on the carbon footprint of these systems. That said, the company partners with green certified facilities where possible, including Equinix whose leading energy efficient and environmentally sustainable data centres account for almost half of the Options footprint. Management has begun a process of data collection to better understand the broader carbon footprint of its environments and is working to lobby with management of its co-location providers to reduce emissions, improve power usage effectiveness and reduce both direct and indirect energy usage.
Employee culture
Options has 190+ full-time employees in nine regions globally and places a huge emphasis on personal and professional development for all its employees. The firm engenders this culture through continual exposure to the its global client base, upward mobility and the encouragement of further learning through employee training and certification schemes. Additionally, each office provides peer mentoring for new starts, a weekly ‘lunch & learn’ series and employee award schemes for exceptional performance.
Health and wellbeing is fundamental to Options’ employee culture. Since 2015, the firm has entered relay teams in the Belfast City Marathon. In 2018, 25 employees ran the race for Action Cancer, a Northern Irish charity, raising over £5,000 in the process. Additionally, the firm offers generous health and wellness benefits to employees, gym discounts and fresh fruit in each of its offices.
The company is ahead of many of its peers when it comes to gender diversity (20%–25% female) and is actively working to hire women within its workforce. Of all post-graduate employees hired in the last two years, 46% were female.
Focussed on offering career opportunities to postgraduate workers
Beginning in 2014, Options developed very strong ties to Queen’s University and Ulster University in Belfast. This has resulted in a pool of highly educated graduates, both technical and non-technical, joining the firm in each of the last four years.
Options offers graduates the chance to travel the world, work with cutting-edge technologies and learn from some of the leading technologists in the financial services industry. As a result, Options is now one of the most in-demand graduate employers in Belfast and the success of the programme has fueled the growth of the Belfast office from a headcount of 15 in 2015 to 70+ at the end of 2017. The firm is currently planning for a further graduate intake in June and September of this year.
Emphasis on energy efficient lighting and recycling at its offices
Options has put recycling programmes in place in its offices globally in an effort to both reduce waste and positively impact the company’s carbon footprint. Additionally, all office lighting has been set to motion sensors to control lighting. The firm expects to drive greater efficiencies in the coming 12 months as it upgrades and improves related technologies in its data centres and offices worldwide.
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