The global B Corporation movement was launched in 2006, with a mission to inspire and enable people to use business as a force for good.

B Corporations are businesses that achieve the highest standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. To certify as a B Corp, businesses have to undergo the B Impact Assessment (administered by the independent not-for-profit B Lab) which measures their positive impact across five stakeholder groups: Customers, Communities, Workers, Governance and the Environment. Those that achieve a high enough score in this assessment will then enshrine their commitment to positive impact in their company articles. Critically, B Corps are re-assessed every few years, to make sure they are delivering on their commitments.

For Bridges, the B Corp philosophy chimed perfectly with our own view that business and investment have a vital role to play in building a more sustainable and inclusive economy. So we have long been a supporter of the movement; and when it came to the UK in 2015, Bridges was one of the founding UK B Corps (there are now over 1,000 certified B Corps in the UK). Since then, we have been selected multiple times as a ‘Best for the World’ B Corp, which honours those that score in the top 5% of B Corps globally within certain categories. And our latest overall B Impact score of 145.4 also puts us in the top 1.5% of all B Corps globally.

The B Impact Assessment has also become one of our most important portfolio management tools, helping us to benchmark new investments and identify impact and value creation opportunities. That has led to a number of our portfolio companies certifying as B Corps in their own right.

We believe the B Corp movement can play an important role in holding business to higher standards of social and environmental performance – by recognising, amplifying and propagating best practice. So we’re keen to support its continued growth through initiatives like the B Finance UK coalition; launched at COP 26 in Glasgow, its aim is to embolden other financial institutions to be more transparent and accountable on climate action.