Corporate social responsibility | Insight Investment

• Our markets – we seek to protect client interests and operate our business with integrity and resilience
• Our people – we seek to encourage effective leadership, well-being, diversity and inclusion for our staff
• Our world – we seek to invest and act responsibly to protect the wider world and, locally, to support the community including through the sponsorship of the arts and sciences and charitable partnerships.

On this page, we take a deeper look at what this means in practice.

We aim to develop successful leaders and managers who drive high productivity and engagement within their teams while challenging ourselves and our recruitment partners to ensure we have the right initiatives in place to encourage the promotion and development of a diverse workforce.

Insight’s employees are critical stakeholders in the business. New joiners receive induction training and the opportunity to meet the CEO and the Head of Human Resources. This typically takes place a few weeks after joining Insight which gives new joiners the opportunity to review how Insight does things and make suggestions of how things could be improved, which is then taken on board by HR representatives. 

Insight is a strong believer in employee development delivering a range of training programs designed to encourage employee and manager development at all levels. Our challenging environment provides the right conditions for employees to hone their skills and expertise and develop within the business.

Insight recognises that diversity of thought, talent and experience is critical to the continued success of our business, industry and society.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are strategic priorities at Insight. We believe that having a workforce that reflects the broader society in which we operate enhances the way we think, adds significant value to decision making and is the right thing to do. No gender, ethnicity, or other social group has a monopoly on good ideas and talent. When recruiting we cast the net wide to attract the very best people from the broadest demographics and backgrounds possible. Hiring diverse talent into our inclusive and collaborative culture enables us to achieve a significant competitive advantage through our people.

There are a clear set of values embedded within Insight’s culture:

• Client Focus: Insight’s clients always come first and we combine this perspective with an environment for our employees that promotes a culture of innovation, collaboration, diversity and inclusion.
• Accountability: We foster a strong culture of ownership, providing our staff autonomy and trust from the start, allowing them to make their own decisions that impact our business.
• Teamwork: We create a culture of camaraderie and trust in our business. We focus on getting the right people with the right expertise and combining them in a diverse team to work together to deliver results.
• Continuous Improvement: We maintain a questioning attitude and are not afraid to speak up and challenge conventional thinking or the status quo.
• Collaboration: We believe that no group has a monopoly on the skills we need to succeed and our team-oriented approach is the lynchpin of our culture. We do things differently because we think differently and we work collaboratively with each other and with our clients.

Click here to learn more about Insight's culture.

Click here to learn more about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Insight

Charities: Colleagues take part in fundraising activities in support of a number of charities globally with a common theme of meeting basic needs. Colleagues in our offices vote on local charities to support. Most recently, the London office voted to support The Felix Project, which fights hunger and food waste, and the Manchester office selected Wood Street Mission, which works with low-income families across Manchester and Salford to provide children’s clothing, school uniforms, bedding, toys and books. 

Insight Cares (our corporate social responsibility charity committee)

Insight Cares comprises members from across the business who meet monthly to lead the development and implementation of our CSR strategy. Its mission is to promote team camaraderie through giving, awareness-raising, engagement and volunteering opportunities.

Insight Investment supports The Felix Project as its charitable partner, voted for by our colleagues in London. Our partnership started in July 2024.

Community initiatives

Insight’s Community Impact Programme encompasses colleague donation and community volunteering. All permanent employees are entitled to take two volunteering days a year, partnering interests or skills with a broad selection of charities.  

Matched funding and support: for employees and initiatives in scope, our parent company BNY Mellon provides dollar matching on team and individual fundraising projects and volunteering events, including donations via salary sacrifice and board service.

RedSTART: Insight has been partnered with RedSTART since 2023. It is a charity that provides financial education to help transform the life chances of young people in the UK.

Through this partnership, colleagues have the opportunity to volunteer and use their financial literacy to develop the financial skills of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, partnering with major financial institutions, local businesses and over 600 volunteers in five key locations across the UK.

They work with schools in disadvantaged settings, running programmes for pupils and providing resources for teachers and parents. Their aim is to support the next generation in getting a head start with their financial future.

UpReach: Each year, Insight hosts work experience students, from a range of universities, in partnership with upReach, an initiative which specialises in social mobility.

Bright Network: We work with Bright Network through our graduate and internship programmes to identify candidates from under-represented groups.

University College London (UCL):  Insight hosts an internship programme operated by UCL where MSc students in Computational Statistics and Machine Learning are asked to complete their thesis with projects proposed by external companies.

Environmental initiatives

Supporting public awareness of the arts

We are very proud to work in partnership with the Royal Academy as the lead sponsor of its Summer Exhibition, the world’s largest open submission contemporary art show. 2024 has been our 18th year as sponsor and the 256th consecutive year in which the RA has mounted the Summer Exhibition. This open, inclusive and democratic show supports the artistic community, art education and provides a display of creativity and joy for the public. The 2024 show is coordinated by sculptor Ann Christopher RA and offered a diverse array of contemporary works including prints, paintings, films, photography, sculpture, and architectural works by a mix of art by household names and emerging talent

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Tackling impersonation fraud

Insight is very alert to the threat posed by criminals who masquerade as authorised investment firms in their attempts to defraud investors. We have seen cases where fraudsters have misused our brand, recreated fake versions of our materials and have impersonated members of our staff in their efforts to deceive investors.

This sadly sometimes results in individuals sharing their identity documents with, and remitting funds to criminals. Fraudsters can be very convincing, and investors have lost significant sums of money. Impersonation fraud is an international concern and we have seen attempts to misuse our brand in the UK, North America, Europe and elsewhere.

• Insight seeks to identify and report attempts to misuse our name as well as doing what is possible to close fraudulent email domains and websites down.
• As a responsible member of the investment community, we also work to raise awareness of the threat of fraud.
• Insight has controls established around all shared contact emails to ensure incoming fraud enquiries are logged and that investors receive timely responses confirming that the contact made to the investor is not us.
• Insight also issues regular reminders through its social media accounts and regularly updates its web notices, for example with advice for investors about how to avoid impersonation fraud.
• We encourage UK investors who are concerned that they have been contacted by fraudsters to report to the Financial Conduct Authority (the FCA) and to Action Fraud, the national fraud and cyber crime reporting centre. We also ask them to tell us about it directly, in as much detail as they can, via fraud@insightinvestment.com.
• More broadly, we advise that it is also worth discussing fraud risks with your family and friends and the more vulnerable members of our society in particular. The following sites have good resources for advice on avoiding investment and pension scams: Action Fraud, FCA ScamSmart and Which? Consumer Rights.
• We firmly believe this growing problem can only be properly addressed through urgent government action and targeted legislation, focused on increasing the accountability of search engines and social media for the content they host. Our view is that the scale of the problem is significantly greater due to victims being unwilling to report fraud or being unaware that they have been defrauded. The lack of enforcement against these scams leads us to expect the situation to deteriorate. Insight made these concerns plain to legislators in relation to the Online Safety Bill.
• Enhanced brand protection services to prevent fraud: In 2019 we enhanced our ability to challenge online frauds targeting the general public and Insight contacts by adding an online brand protection service to identify groups seeking to use Insight’s trademarks and identity to mislead contacts and commit financial fraud. Fraudulent enterprises have been identified and shut down and ongoing monitoring of the digital landscape has been enhanced as an early warning system.

CSR report

BNY Mellon uses its resources and expertise to create positive social impact. For more information please read its ESG Enterprise Report for 2022, available for download here.

Contact us

Please contact Gabrielle Oliver: 

Click here to email Gabrielle Oliver