Responsible Investment Report 2024
Opening Remarks
At Bregal, we believe that prioritizing sustainability achieves more resilient businesses and enhances our portfolio and competitive edge, especially relevant today as we live through current market volatility. Our report this year demonstrates how sustainability continues to be strategic driver of value for us across our direct and indirect strategies.
Jens Benninkmeyer
Chief Strategy Officer - Bregal Investments
In the face of rapid technological acceleration, geostrategic shifts, climate change, and continued growth in customer expectations on sustainability, the focus of our program has remained engaging with our portfolio to drive tangible ESG outcomes. Our continued aim is to support portfolio companies and GPs in deploying practical, scalable solutions to make sustainability a core driver of long-term value creation.
Egle Sakalauskaite
Head of Responsible Investing - Bregal Investments
In 2024, we strengthened our responsible investing program by building additional subject matter expertise within our team and deepening our integration of thematic topics into our portfolio company engagement. Across our core themes of climate and nature, cybersecurity, and human rights, we now systematically assess company performance during due diligence for risks and opportunities and through active ownership and annual monitoring.
Recognizing Bregal’s exposure to software and services businesses and the increasing adoption of GenAI technology, we have deepened our focus on Responsible AI, launching a dedicated Responsible AI forum at Sagemount’s portfolio conference in 2024 to accelerate awareness of emerging risks and opportunities. We believe that integrating responsible AI principles into governance and deployment of AI not only safeguards against potential risks but strengthens customer trust.
Additionally, we continued decarbonizing our portfolio. As of 2024 year-end, 37% of our eligible invested capital have approved science-based targets and an additional 9% of eligible invested capital with committed targets. Beyond target setting, our companies are delivering on year-on-year emissions reductions in line with their targets, largely through renewable energy adoption. A key accelerant for portfolio decarbonization and sustainable growth continues to be Bregal’s Sustainable Development Financing (SDF) program. In 2024, we deployed four SDF loans that drove solar PV adoption, greater energy efficiency, and sustainable tech development, reflecting the impact of our active ownership. For example, we deployed capital to an EU-based software company to build out a feature within their core offering to enable greater sharing of product-level sustainability information, addressing growing customer demand for transparent and accurate sustainability data.
Within Bregal Private Equity Partners (BPEP), our fund of funds strategy, 2024 marked a pivotal year in the evolution of our portfolio engagement, centered around deepening our partnerships with General Partners (GPs) to support their long term ESG progress. Our responsible investing program for BPEP, underpinned by our annual ESG data campaign and GP scorecard, has deepened relationships with our GPs, providing clear peer-benchmarking and practical guidance that is already translating into measurable progress.
We remain committed to evolving our responsible investing approach as our strategies evolve, ensuring ESG continues to create measurable value and supports the long-term success of our strategies.
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