College purpose and investments

The Trustees of the Royal College of Anaesthetists are responsible for directing and controlling College activities to deliver its objects as detailed in our Royal Charter.

We seek to maximise the returns from investments to enable the College to deliver these objects. Limiting the investment pool by excluding investment opportunities may impact on our ability to resource College work. However, we are also mindful that the reputation of the College is important to our fellows, members and the wider specialty, and that how we invest may impact upon this reputation. Moreover, the College can offer leadership to medical and healthcare professionals more widely, and we believe that our members expect us to embrace this role.

Current environmental, social & governance exclusions

We do not knowingly invest in funds that include investments in tobacco, armaments, gambling and pornography, and we require our investment managers to provide assurances that any funds in which it invests do not include such investments.

Additionally, we have recently disinvested from fossil fuel suppliers that are not compliant with the Paris Agreement.

Investments

We use investment managers who oversee charitable mixed pooled funds.

The benefit of using these funds for the College is that they are both cost efficient and environmental, social & governance (ESG) aware, being investment vehicles for many charities that are sensitive to how their funds are invested.

We review the ESG criteria of these funds before investment and talk regularly to our investment managers on ESG matters. We are guided by our investment managers’ advice on engagement and exclusion matters due to their expertise in this complex area.

We are currently assured that we are meeting our trustee responsibilities by continued investment with our current investment managers.

Challenge

From time to time, a member may feel we are not meeting our obligations as trustees regarding investments. We welcome challenge from our Fellows and Members in relation to our investment policies and request that they email the investment committee at invco@rcoa.ac.uk.