Human rights in investing: What you need to know

Webinar transcript

Panelists

• Olivia Marlow – Senior Investment Director for Charities, Rathbones 
• Anna Triponel – CEO and Founder, Human Level 
• Matt Crossman – Stewardship Director, Rathbones 
• Agnes McAfee – Senior ESG Researcher, Rathbones

 

Introduction

Olivia Marlow: Welcome, and thank you for joining us for this educational webinar on human rights and investment. I'm Olivia Marlow, a Senior Investment Director for Charities at Rathbones, and I'll be chairing today's discussion.

This session is designed for charities and faith-based investors – particularly those looking to strengthen how human rights are considered, understood and applied in investment practice. We know that for many organisations, this is no longer a peripheral issue. Human rights risks increasingly intersect with stewardship, portfolio construction, regulation, reputation and long-term investment outcomes. So our aim today is to explore how investors can move from broad principles to practical action – how they might identify and assess human rights risks, how to engage companies more effectively, and how to think about emerging issues including forced labour, board accountability and the implications of new technologies such as AI.

I'm delighted to be joined by a really excellent panel today. Anna Triponel is CEO and Founder of Human Level and a leading expert on business and human rights. Matt Crossman is Stewardship Director at Rathbones and brings deep experience in company engagement and stewardship. Agnes McAfee is a Senior ESG Researcher at Rathbones and will bring the perspective of ESG integration and portfolio application.

We'll begin with a short presentation from Anna to set the scene and draw out some of the key themes, and then we'll move on to a panel discussion bringing in Matt and Agnes. So, Anna – thank you very much for being with us. I'm going to hand over to you to share your opening presentation and help frame why human rights should matter to investors today, what good practice looks like in reality, and where you think the agenda is heading next.

 

Opening presentation

Anna Triponel: Thank you, Olivia. Thank you so much for the invitation – it's such a pleasure to be here.

I'm going to delve into what human rights and business means today and why it matters for investors. To build briefly on Olivia's introduction, I had the privilege of working on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights – the framework of reference for companies when it comes to human rights. This was developed from 2005 to 2011 while I was at Harvard; it was a mandate from the UN. When the UN Guiding Principles were endorsed in 2011, I set out to work with companies and investors to put them into practice in a way that is feasible and manageable while staying true to the spirit of the UNGPs.

I've got around 10 to 15 minutes to set the stage about what these expectations are and what they mean for companies and investors, and then – as Olivia has described – we're going to dig into it more deeply and really unpick it.

The positive and the negative

Many of you will know that companies have tremendously positive impacts on people – creating jobs, services and products that are necessary. But companies can also have very negative impacts on people through how they operate. This framework of business and human rights is really intended to govern the negative impact that companies can have on people's human rights.

There is a framework of reference for human rights in international law, but we don't have to be lawyers to understand it, because at its essence it is about what it means to be a human being – that I'm not treated with disrespect, that I'm not discriminated against, that I'm not tied to my job, that I'm not pushed into a situation where I start to make severe mistakes and hurt myself at work. Health and safety. All of these standards exist, and companies and investors might ask, "Which ones apply?" Well, actually, there is a right to cover most situations. It really is about that core baseline of respect – that people are respected as they live and that companies don't adversely infringe upon that respect.

Where the pressure comes from

Companies – and therefore investors – are being asked to think about human rights, and that pressure comes from many different stakeholder groups. The UN Guiding Principles, which I'll describe in a moment, are "soft law" because they were endorsed at the UN level. But that soft law has become hard law – it is being written into legislation in a number of jurisdictions, including EU law. So what we're sharing here today, although 20 years ago it was more a case of "these are the world's expectations of companies," is now more and more a binding legal obligation as well. With that comes risks of litigation and increased scrutiny.

But there are also other reasons for doing it. We see consumers wanting to know more about what companies are doing. We see peer-to-peer and business-to-business expectations from customers. There is a whole range of different pressures coming in, so it's helpful to have one framework of reference for what those expectations are.

The business case

This slide is really describing that although companies might wish to respect human rights because it's part of their values, what we have seen – as Olivia described – is that more and more, even if you don't want to do it for the people, you do it for the business, because not respecting human rights comes with very severe business risks. If not in the short term, then over the longer term – we've seen it again and again.

Things like the hit on your reputation – sometimes we've seen human rights scandals and then suddenly the share price drops. We've seen lenders unwilling to lend to companies because they're seen as too risky. We've seen companies unable to manage their supply chains – no supply chain resilience. Workers increasingly want to work for companies known to respect human rights, and they leave those that don't. We're seeing more strategic lawsuits to set the benchmark of what human rights respect should look like. We're seeing more soft-law instances – not litigation as such, but quasi-judicial mechanisms called OECD National Contact Points. And we're seeing more fines, penalties and benchmarking.

Suffice to say, whether we do it for human rights or for the business, what we often say is: as long as you're using the framework, it matters. Use the reason that works for you – the hook that a company can connect to.

States, companies and remedy

Taking a step back, I want to describe a little of the framing so we can explore it in our conversation. Some of you might be thinking, "Hang on – human rights is for governments." And yes, under international law, governments have the duty to protect human rights. This is not about governments getting out of that state duty to protect. In fact, under the UN Guiding Principles, it's made very clear that states should be doing this, and when states aren't doing it – or are weakening their laws – it makes it a lot harder for companies.

So the UN Guiding Principles say states have to protect and promote those rights. But for companies, it's a baseline of "I'm not harming people as I conduct my business." That's the difference between the duty to protect and the responsibility to respect. The third pillar of the UNGPs is essentially about remedy – when harm has happened, can we put it right?

The four essentials

I'm going to go through four essentials that I think are key to keep in mind, because they help us understand how we live and breathe these expectations in practice.

First – focus on risks to people. Although there are many business risks that arise when we don't respect human rights, what matters here is that we're looking at the risks to people in and of themselves, irrespective of whether there are visible risks to business straight away. Our entry point is: where are the impacts to people? They will likely manifest as risks to business too. That's different from traditional corporate due diligence, where you might be looking at reputational risk or thresholds from the start. Here, you look at the people first and then add on the risk to business to make the internal case.

Second – international standards, not just national laws. That actually helps companies, because instead of saying "I'm looking at this law here and that law there," it's more: "These are the standards at the international level – how can I respect them at the national level?" Of course, when national laws conflict, it makes it harder, but it doesn't remove the expectation to respect those human rights under international law.

Third – the scope is broad. Some of you might recall that before the UN Guiding Principles, there was something called the "sphere of influence" – essentially, "I'm responsible for my own operations, then tier one, then tier two, then communities." The UNGPs – and now the law – say: no, it doesn't matter where it is. What matters is whether you are connected to it in your value chain. And if it's a very severe impact, you're asked to prioritise it. Yes, the scope looks immense – some companies have thousands of business relationships all over the world – but the good news is that you can prioritise based on salience: which impacts are the most severe to people? Focus on those.

Fourth – investors are included. There was a strong debate when this field started: what if I'm only invested at 0.1% – do I still have a responsibility? That debate lasted around three years, and where it landed was: yes, there is still a responsibility, even with a small percentage. But what you can do about it will change because of that small percentage. There is a realism baked into the UNGPs – you're not on the hook for everything no matter what, but you are expected to look at where you have severe risks and think about what you can do.

Human rights due diligence

The core concept of the UN Guiding Principles is human rights due diligence. That means companies – and investors, because they share in this responsibility – are asked to scan for where their adverse human rights impacts on people might be, given what they do, where they operate, and who their business relationships are. Then they identify which risks rise to the top in terms of salience.

I've worked with a number of leading companies that published their first salience maps in 2011, 2012, 2013. And the picture is different depending on the sector: if it's an Ericsson, it's going to be more about the right to privacy and freedom of expression; if it's a Unilever, it's going to be more about living wage and working hours.

Tackling those risks means thinking about what it would take for the risk not to happen, for the severity to be reduced, or – if it has already happened, which it often does – what it would take to put it right. That's what we call the remediation part. And then, as good organisations do: is it working? We track whether it's working, and then we tell people what we're doing – that's the communication part.

Salience and severity

The salience framework means we prioritise based on risks to people, not risks to the company. Companies often use a risk heat map to help with this. There are three components of severity:

• Scale – How many people could be impacted? Are we talking about two workers or the whole workforce?
• Scope – What level of harm are we talking about? Someone out of work for two days, or a six-month injury?
• Remediability – Can we put it right? Some things can be mended; some things simply cannot, which makes it much more severe.

We look at those three factors together and say: these are my top salient risks as a company or investor. Then the second lens of salience – often the one we use most – is: which countries, which business relationships, what's the activity like, is the company already trying to mitigate these risks, and what kind of people are involved? Is this a company engaging a lot of migrant workers or women? Are they highly skilled and able to find another job easily? That helps companies and investors prioritise.

Cause, contribution and direct linkage

There are different expectations in the UN Guiding Principles depending on how a company or investor is involved with an impact:

• Cause – The classic scenario: I have a pregnant employee and I fire her. I've caused that. I'm on the hook. I have to put it right and make sure it doesn't happen again.
• Contribution – Two business partners together might contribute. Perhaps I've placed an order with a supplier and the supplier executes it. That's contribution. Or together they've created a cumulative impact – river pollution, for example. Both companies are on the hook for putting it right.
• Direct linkage – This is where it gets tricky, for both companies and investors. It's mainly where investors sit. It's not that Rathbones has done something to directly harm people – it's more that a company in the portfolio has an impact, and the investor is connected to it through the flow of money without having created the conditions for it. The expectation here is to build leverage and influence – think about how to stop that impact, mitigate its severity, or remediate it, often by working with others.

Some examples of how to build that leverage: working collectively with other investors, working with companies to help them collaborate with peers. The days of top-down, through-the-chain due diligence are gone. It's much more about recognising that these things are hard and asking: how can we tackle them together?

Bigger-picture trends

I'll conclude with the bigger-picture trends reshaping the world of human rights for business: climate change and the transition we're undergoing; the way conflict is reshaping the map and heightening risks; geopolitics and the decline in democracy – we're back to 1970s levels of democracy today, which of course has an impact on human rights; AI, which we'll talk about more later; and the rise in inequality.

It's not easy to do, but luckily there's a strong framework and we're all aligned behind it – both the laws and the soft law. Now it's about what it looks like in practice. So I'm really pleased to be delving into that now.

 

Panel discussion

Olivia Marlow: Thank you, Anna. That was a really helpful overview and very thought-provoking to set the scene. You've set out very clearly both the urgency of the issue and some of the practical takeaways for investors. What I'd like to do now is broaden the discussion and bring in Matt and Agnes so we can explore what this means in practice from both a stewardship perspective and a portfolio perspective.

Anna has helped us frame the big picture – why human rights matters, how investors should think about responsibility and materiality, and why due diligence needs to go beyond statements of intent. Let's examine how these issues show up in real investment decision-making, engagement and oversight.

Anna, perhaps I could start with you with quite a high-level question before we get into the detail. How would you say investors should be thinking about human rights as both a risk and a responsibility today?

Anna Triponel: That's exactly right – it started out with the framing being more about risk. If I'm investing in a company and they don't have these due diligence processes in place, if they haven't started to consider what their salient human rights risks might be, then chances are that their whole governance is flawed – the culture isn't quite right, and there are broader issues. We talk about ESG: if that governance of human rights isn't there, if that understanding isn't there, we've seen again and again that it's an indicator for the investor that other things are wrong too – often related to corruption and environmental issues. It's all connected. I've never really seen a company that's amazing on other issues and then just poor on human rights. The culture, the governance, the risk management – they go together. So it is such a risk not to have that in place, and it's such a gift to be able to use human rights as your entry point.

Of course, the responsibility is there in soft law. But I think what we've seen emerge more recently – and what I think is really interesting – is the opportunity. As I touched on when talking about the landscape, these things are really hard, and the world is getting messier. Investors are actually a really powerful stakeholder group now in helping companies: "Hang on, here's what this would look like. Let's be more mindful. Let's build leverage with others. Let's not take a tick-box approach." The opportunity for the role of investors has really increased, and there's a lot riding on that role – which is why it's so great to have this conversation.

Olivia Marlow: Thank you. Agnes, how do you think investors can practically identify and assess human rights risks across clearly complex portfolios, particularly where risks are indirect or buried deep in the value chain?

Agnes McAfee: As Anna mentioned, investors now have a really strong framework for identifying these risks, and it can be used quite practically in investment research and decision-making.

At a portfolio level, there are three broad ways we can identify these risks.

The first is at a macro level. You're trying to map a heat map of where the highest likelihood of risk is going to occur. This can be across geographies where there's a lack of strong statehood, or where there's increased conflict or violence. You can look for higher-risk business models – things like high immigration workforces, gig workers or fast fashion. You can look at particular sectors that tend to be higher risk, such as construction or agriculture. And then there are different types of commodities that are often linked to harms to communities – things like palm oil, cotton and cocoa. When you have that macro view, you can form a heat map of where higher risks are more likely to occur.

From there, you go down to the second tier, which is company-level assessment. This is where we at Rathbones have built our human rights due diligence framework, very much based on the UN Guiding Principles. We do a deep-dive on the particular company and look at what governance they have in place. What policies exist? Have they been mapping their suppliers? Do they actively consult with their workers? Are there appropriate grievance mechanisms? Are they auditing? Are they conducting worker interviews? How ingrained is this within their governance structure? Are they reporting on it? Are they finding instances? And, as we say, it's equally important to ask: what does the remediation look like? Where they identify higher risks, what are they doing about it, and how are they managing it going forward?

The third tier is engagement. As Anna mentioned, it's really interesting when you have the opportunity to collaborate with companies, because you often find out information that's so granular it wouldn't be reported at a company level. This really demonstrates the internal culture – how aware they are of potential impacts to people and what they're doing about it. That feeds into the ongoing dialogue about the role investors can play.

A really interesting example of the granularity you can find at company-level engagement: quite recently, we were talking with a North American grocery chain and asked them about their human rights practices. They hadn't disclosed anything publicly yet, but as it turned out, they'd done a full mapping and auditing of their supplier operations. What they'd found, using a risk-based approach, was that the highest risk of harm was actually in the transportation space – predominantly shipping – where they didn't have visibility. So what they were doing was working with suppliers to ensure there was Wi-Fi available on ships, so that if there was any risk of harm, people had a means of communication and could be better connected. It's things like that you don't always find in an annual report, but which really show how much a company is thinking about these issues, how they've mapped their high-risk areas, and how they're working with their suppliers.

So there's a lot that investors can do. Our role, as Anna said, is to really understand where the likelihood of risk is and to use what leverage we can to mitigate that risk across our portfolios.

Olivia Marlow: Thank you. I think that real-world example is really useful to bring it to life. We'll come back to stewardship and engagement with Matt in a moment. But just while I have you, Agnes – building on from that, from an investor's perspective, how do you think attitudes have shifted regarding human rights as a material risk? Are we seeing more investors adopt human rights policies? Are expectations for companies moving beyond policy statements towards more tangible due diligence and measurable outcomes?

Agnes McAfee: Absolutely. And I think it's really important to ground this in what we've said so far: when you're thinking about human rights, there is always a materiality to it, but it's first and foremost about the risk to people. How that plays out in terms of the business case can differ in terms of timeframes as well.

One of the things that's becoming clearer – and more material to investors – is that, as Anna said, this is increasingly an expectation. It's being ingrained more in hard law. You're seeing a lot more litigation and reputational damage as human rights moves to the forefront. It was only within the last year or so that we saw a bank found liable for complicity in harms connected to a dictatorship in Sudan in the early 2000s. This was nearly 20 years later, and they faced 20 million dollars in damages in the US for their complicity. So I think you're seeing and hearing much more of this being financially material to companies – and that's just one example.

There are also huge reputational risks. With that comes the increase in expectations to go beyond policy. Following the human rights due diligence approach, it's really about understanding what companies are doing about these risks, how they're engaging with their stakeholders, how they understand the likelihood of harm, and how they're managing it. That's where you hopefully start to see opportunities to mitigate risks going forward – and where the material risk is less likely to eventuate.

Olivia Marlow: Matt, coming to you now. From a stewardship perspective, when investors engage on human rights, what tends to distinguish the more meaningful conversations from the more superficial ones?

Matt Crossman: Thanks, Olivia – it's a great question. I'd start by zooming out a little. The trend we're seeing is that companies and investors are addressing these issues more and more. A really interesting data point: the Principles for Responsible Investment – the biggest global membership organisation on responsible investment, with around four to five thousand members across the world – asks its members to report on various aspects of what they're doing, including how they're integrating human rights. Between 2024 and 2025 – not the best time for responsible investment themes, with Trump 2.0 and various geopolitical uncertainty – we saw 70% of signatories now having a human rights policy, up from 56% in 2023. 39% were doing some form of human rights due diligence, up from 31%. And 14% were doing the really hard, leading stuff – providing or enabling remedy – up from 11%. Small but important progress at that end, and the overwhelming trend is that investors are asking their companies about these things and setting up human rights policies.

But to your question about what makes engagement meaningful – well, it's a bit like Anna's slides earlier. Much as we might find it a bit distasteful, what really helps is a clear alignment with the business case. And happily, there is a very strong overlap between the moral sense of duty we all have as citizens – whether acting as a trustee or for whatever beneficiary base – and the financial case for acting on human rights. It really is there.

I think it's often a matter of repackaging or rewording things in a way that a company can get behind. My team – and Agnes's team – are skilled at being good negotiators, repackaging and remodelling things to make them more palatable.

A couple of specific practical points. As in any engagement, it matters who you're speaking to. Two examples show the extremes. Just in the last couple of weeks, we were very positively asked by a very senior sustainability team member at a bank to attend their AGM and ask a question about modern slavery, because they wanted to build more internal capital with their board so they could do more. That was very positive – we found the right person and have a great dialogue that's supportive but stretching. The same week, we had a call with a big tech brand where there was one fairly junior person from investor relations and three external lawyers on the call. So it depends on the corporate culture, and a good engagement team will adapt.

But I think the key thing is: is there honesty, openness and a willingness to admit you have issues? That's what really distinguishes quality dialogue from superficial dialogue.

We had a really interesting progression with one company. They came in and said, "We've got no problems. We've mapped our supply chain. Everything's completely fine." We said, "Well, here's this research suggesting your industry has baked-in problems with human rights." They told us they had a hotline that received zero calls and zero complaints the previous year. So we had that supportive but stretching dialogue, showing them the data – they were probably looking for the wrong things in the wrong areas. Negotiation being the art of letting the other person have it your way, we led them towards an epiphany about how they could change their reporting, and we've since seen huge positive steps from that company. That's one isolated example, but I think the key ingredients are honesty, openness and investors being a partner – someone there to support companies but also to stretch them.

Anna Triponel: Totally agree.

Olivia Marlow: Thank you. Agnes, coming back to you – from a portfolio and research standpoint, what does a future-fit investment strategy look like when human rights, climate, nature and technology risks are all becoming increasingly interconnected?

Agnes McAfee: I think Anna said it really well earlier: you seldom see a company that's absolutely thriving in one area and missing across all the others, and vice versa. These are all very much interconnected issues, and I think the industry and investors more broadly are well aware of that.

On one side, that means negative impacts can have spillover effects on the other pillars. But on the flip side, positive impacts can also have co-benefits across nature, human rights, climate and technology. So you start to think about these issues not as individual concerns but as whole systems at play, and how those systems interact.

That involves a different approach. A lot of the work we've been doing lately – and I'm sure Matt can speak to this – is not just at a company level but at a wider systems level. Where are we working with our collective leverage, as Anna mentioned earlier, through investor coalitions or system stewardship? Perhaps at a policy level, we can play a role in creating the enabling environment for these individual pillars to have positive co-benefits. But it also changes how you have to think about doing the research.

A lot of the work over the last few years has been around getting good ESG disclosure and data, which has been incredibly helpful for investors – it gives everyone a framework for assessing materiality. But those data points are not in themselves wholly perfect. They're not the one and only indicator needed. One reason is that they tend to be lagging, because you're always reporting on past-year events. When you're looking at future-fit strategies, you start to think about modelling and forecasting.

For example, climate modelling could in future have an impact on inflation, but also on migration and displacement – where certain areas see weather changes that affect livability or the continuity of businesses, meaning businesses need to shift. How are we forecasting those changes in geography, people movements and the associated human rights risks?

So it's very much about ensuring different strategies are deployed within investment research depending on what you're trying to assess and why, and how that feeds into decision-making. It's about building a future-looking, systems-based, holistic approach.

Olivia Marlow: Anna, if I could come back to you. Many companies say they're addressing forced labour, yet still fail to identify or remedy abuses in practice. Where are voluntary corporate efforts falling short, and how might emerging regulations help raise the floor?

Anna Triponel: Yes – the UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner just came out with its report on this, and indeed, as you say, Olivia, it found that forced labour has increased and is at its highest level yet, even though there have been so many efforts to tackle it. We've got the laws, so it feels – how can that be?

This echoes a finding from the ILO last year, which described how forced labour has got worse over the last ten years. They set out the picture as to why, and it really is because forced labour doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's not at all a case of a few bad apples in the supply chain trying to get workers on the cheap. You've got this global context of migration driven by climate change and conflict, vulnerability, inequality that's increasing, people becoming more desperate for income and livelihoods. There's a lot of money to be made – the gangmasters, the recruiters, the savings from cheap labour – it's a very lucrative business. You've got these recruitment corridors, and vulnerable workers are flowing into countries. This year, UK nationals are actually the highest percentage of forced labour victims – that was the finding – compared with migrant workers coming in from overseas. So it's not always migrant workers; you can also be trapped in forced labour as a national.

These conditions mean that if you try to tackle forced labour with a top-down approach – "Tell me if you have it, here's a questionnaire, we want you to sign this" – it definitely does not work. I've been on the ground in many countries doing human rights impact assessments, and workers have shared with me: "They no longer take our passports – now they take our credit cards. It's the same thing. We can't leave." It's like whack-a-mole, because the system is so conducive to forced labour. The measures you take will stop one symptom, but other symptoms will arise.

That's why we need a collective effort, and that's why legislation is so important – both in countries where forced labour is prevalent, to set the benchmark for monitoring, and in host countries, to track what's happening overseas. But the legislation needs to be meaningful and help tackle the root causes, not just the symptoms.

Matt Crossman: I would just say, Olivia, that it's not just the third sector or the investment community backing legislation that resets the playing field. It's the companies themselves. We've got broad company support for human rights due diligence law here in the UK from many high-street brands that listeners would recognise, because they want that level playing field. They want a world in which their efforts to address these issues are rewarded, and where there isn't undercutting or dumping from other areas. It really is a grand coalition of the third sector, investors and businesses that want this regulation to come in.

Olivia Marlow: Raising the general floor for everyone. Thank you. I think we have time for perhaps one more question – and do feel free to leave any parting comments as well. What do you think is the one thing that boards are still missing when it comes to human rights risk, and how can we as investors and regulators better support boards in taking ownership of these issues – especially in sectors where the risks are perhaps less obviously visible?

Agnes, I'll start with you.

Agnes McAfee: The thing that comes to mind is that human rights are just so incredibly vast. They tackle a lot of different issues and come across in many different ways. As Anna said earlier, it's not just your tier-one suppliers – it's your employees, your workforce, your second-tier suppliers and your communities.

I think boards have the ambition, and it's about supporting them to focus on identifying where the biggest impact is, where the highest likelihood of risk lies, and what's most material to us as investors. It's about having that dialogue: no one's going to get it perfect on day one, so how do we get the ball rolling and focus efforts where we can see the biggest likelihood of harm and mitigate it as best we can?

I'll pass to Matt.

Matt Crossman: I might be cheeky and have two, but I'll be quick. First, building on what Agnes and Anna have said – I think it's this awareness that the landscape is shifting. Even if you thought you were sorted on this five years ago, the role of big tech and AI within every business now should force a reset and a rethink at board level about where human rights risks are hiding in your supply chain. A constant awareness to reassess where the risks are and whether you're managing them should feed into every board's risk management strategy.

Second, I'd like to put to rest the myth that doing this is just a drag on performance. We've had brilliant data from the UN Environment Programme that tracked around 200 companies who demonstrably improved their human rights performance over an eight- to nine-year period. It looked at three core financial metrics – profitability, return on capital employed, and others – and found no observable drag from improving human rights performance. I think we can put that one to bed, and that message reaching board awareness would really help move this agenda forward.

Anna Triponel: I'd add two things as well. First, boards need to understand the long-term – and sometimes short-term – consequences of programmes that seek to cut costs. It looks good on paper, and maybe it looks great for shareholders in terms of P&L savings, but it has a lot of impacts on people that will start to become impacts on business over the longer run. I've definitely seen that over the last two years: decisions around cost-cutting, changing suppliers, changing workforces, turning employees into contractors – all decisions that look good for the financials but are ultimately not good for the financials, and not good for people.

Second, to echo everything we've discussed: the landscape is changing so rapidly. We have a nonprofit at Human Level where we're always documenting what's going on – we send it out every Friday for free. AI and the way it will reshape business models, the inequality-deepening effect of AI – it will be significant without very serious attention. So we need to think about that alongside the just transition and geopolitics and conflict. We're in for a journey. But if we use the framework mindfully and really recognise that we can build leverage through others, that's the only way forward given the risks accelerating in today's world of business.

Olivia Marlow: Really interesting. Thank you, Anna, and thank you, Matt and Agnes, for such a rich and practical discussion.

To our audience: I hope today's session has helped to show that human rights is not a niche concern sitting alongside investment practice, but a core issue that increasingly shapes risk, stewardship, accountability and long-term outcomes for us all as investors. For faith-based investors in particular, it's an area where values and investment responsibilities come together in a very clear and direct way.

We've covered a wide range of issues today – from due diligence and engagement to forced labour, board oversight, and emerging risks linked to AI and other technologies. The clear message is that investors need to move beyond high-level commitments and focus on how risks are being identified, prioritised and acted on in practice.

Thank you again to our speakers, and thank you to everyone joining us for this webinar today. We hope you found it useful, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.