Our approach to sustainability
Link Group’s Sustainability Strategy supports our purpose of connecting people with their assets – safely, securely, and responsibly. The strategy is comprised of three pillars that incorporate ESG focus areas considered to be material to our business.
Our Sustainability Commitment
We strive to act responsibly, support our clients, contribute to employee wellbeing, diversity and inclusion, and deliver mutual business and social benefits in the communities we operate in.
Our strategy continues to align to the Paris Agreement and four of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that we can contribute to progressing. We have set short, medium, and long-term targets with a focus on reducing GHG emissions to help us achieve net zero emissions by FY2030 and commenced the expansion of scope 3 emissions data including investigating ways to measure our supply chain emissions, capture data for our outsourced data centres and cloud providers, and measure emissions of our paper consumption. We remain on track for delivery of our set targets and have developed a 2030 plan to achieve them. We are pleased to announce that we have reduced absolute scope 2 emissions by 25% from the FY2019 baseline therefore achieving our FY2023 target ahead of the timeframe. Further we have achieved over 94% coverage of our business for ISO27001:2013 certification therefore meeting our data & information security target ahead of the timeframe. Link Group is also a founding member of the Australian Sustainable Finance Institute (ASFI).
To further demonstrate our commitment, Link Group is proud to have joined Australian Sustainable Finance Institute (ASFI) as one of its founding members.
ASFI is a collaborative entity formed of Australia’s financial sector leaders and peak bodies focused on shaping an Australian economy that prioritises human wellbeing, social equity and environmental protection with financial system resilience and stability in mind.
Sustainability Strategy
About this section
This Sustainability Report provides transparency on how we approach sustainability in our operations, supply chain, and with our stakeholders. It provides an overview of initiatives underway across each pillar of our Sustainability Strategy.
This section has been prepared in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Universal Standards 2016: core option. Link Group will commence reporting against the GRI Universal Standards 2021 from FY2023. Link Group’s FY2022 sustainability disclosures have been selected based on those that are the most material to our business/and or of the greatest importance and relevance to our stakeholders. For a full list of disclosures referenced in this report, please refer to the GRI Content Index available at https://www.linkgroup.com/sustainability.html.
The section covers the sustainability activities of Link Group across all our controlled entities during the period 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022 and represents more than 30 offices in the 18 jurisdictions in which we operated during the year unless otherwise stated. Please refer to the Annual Report for all major changes that occurred during the year.
Where appropriate we may include references to events that have occurred since the end of the financial reporting period, but prior to publication.
Link Group has an internal sustainability data verification process that is linked to our sustainability data management system (DMS) to verify the integrity of any periodic disclosures of this section. Our DMS consolidates all sustainability data for disclosure purposes across 18 jurisdictions of operations and allows for a consistent approach globally for recording, monitoring, and reporting to the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standards1. The information is validated by the business and our Global Sustainability Manager. The section is approved by the Link Group Board. No external assurance was sought for our sustainability disclosures within this report.
1 https://ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/standards/ghg-protocol-revised.pdf
Materiality and Stakeholder Engagement
Our approach to understanding our material sustainability impacts considers the environmental, social, and economic risks mapped as significant for our industry under the SASB materiality map.
We also consider any other material topics identified via a review of macro factors and megatrends, and by undertaking desktop-based research. Each year we review our material topics and further consider materiality in the context of emerging global trends, the GRI Standards, and the SDGs. We engage with our stakeholders and work collaboratively to manage business risks and opportunities. The review includes understanding current and emerging risks, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and our position in response to these. An analysis is performed to identify topics followed by prioritisation of topics. The review demonstrates if our Sustainability Strategy continues to reflect our significant or material economic, environmental, and social impacts, and those that are most likely to influence the assessments and decisions of stakeholders including investors.
Stakeholder groups
- Employees/potential employees;
- Shareholders and investment community;
- Clients and their customers;
- Suppliers;
- Communities;
- Industry;
- Regulators.
Material Topics 1
- market transformation
- digital disruption
- privacy
- data safety and cyber security
- energy consumption
- responsible supply chain management
- our people’s health and safety
- employee development and wellbeing
- diversity
- inclusion and gender equity
- human rights
- conduct and ethics
- community relations
Method of stakeholder engagement
We utilise a blend of indirect and direct engagement for our internal and external stakeholders. We engage with our people through surveys, regular email and video updates, town hall updates and round tables (in person and virtually) to understand how we can become a better place to work, and to assist us in attracting and retaining talent. Monitored email boxes and anonymous communication channels are also available for our people to provide feedback on any number of topics, at any time. We engage with our external stakeholders in several ways, including and not limited to:
- Client satisfaction surveys which incorporate ESG related questions;
- Interactions with key regulatory, government and industry bodies in all our jurisdictions;
- Regular participation in key industry meetings, conferences and forums;
- Regular client meetings to review our performance and identify issues and future needs; and
- Direct communication with customers of our clients e.g. fund members, shareholders and investors.
Read the full Sustainability Report within this year’s Annual Report.
1 The internal boundary for all material topics is Link Group, which includes all our controlled entities. The external boundary for all material topics includes our external impacts particularly the needs of our external stakeholders.