Committed to improving financial inclusion

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, Kensington has provided loans to residential borrowers with income complexity who are underserved by high street banks and building societies. Kensington’s underwriting approach allows it to look beneath the surface, consider complex and multiple income sources (including non-recurring income streams) and comfortably lend to a broader range of customers throughout their life cycle than high street lenders will consider.

Kensington addresses the needs of borrowers with complex income that need manual underwriting as they do not fit the ‘one size fits all approach’ taken by high street lenders which rely on highly automated underwriting models and efficiency-driven approaches to facilitate their ability to offer the most competitive rates. The social objective of Kensington is to improve access to home loan finance and facilitate home ownership for a target population comprising viable borrowers that are underserved by high street banks despite their high quality profile – borrowers with multiple and/or complex incomes, self-employed, contractors, first-time buyers, later life & younger borrowers and borrowers looking to purchase affordable housing. 100% of Kensington owner-occupied loans originated post-crisis provide clear social benefits for the borrowers that are considered underserved, achieving Kensington’s ESG social objective.

Leveraging its analytical expertise to model mortgage credit risk enables Kensington to drive financial inclusion by providing mortgage finance to those borrowers that are struggling to obtain mortgages at mainstream banks given they have some complexity in their income profile that requires a tailored and granular underwriting approach that Kensington is able to undertake.

Kensington has developed a Social Bond framework under which it issues Gemgarto social bonds and use the proceeds to refinance the purchase of a portfolio of owner-occupied loans that constitute Eligible Social Projects. These Eligible Social Projects align with the ICMA Social Bond Principles (2020 edition) (social project categories of Access to Essential Services (Banking) and/or Socioeconomic Advancement and Empowerment through equitable access to and control over real estate assets that serve as main residence) and contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 10 (‘Reducing Inequalities’, Targets 10.2 & 10.3) & 11 (‘Sustainable Cities and Communities’, Targets 11.1 & 11.3). Kensington raised and allocated £472 million of proceeds to Eligible Social Projects as part of the issuance of Gemgarto 2021-1 in February 2021.

Supporting Employees

Kensington believes that a sustainable business is one which looks after the long-term wellbeing of its customers and its employees.

Kensington actively promotes and supports mental and physical wellbeing; the firm provides a free 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme and has a Wellbeing Forum that is formed of a broad representation of colleagues, with the aim to support the workforce in a multi-location environment and build resilience utilizing the 5 ways to wellbeing:

1. Stay connected   2. Be Active & Healthy   3. Keep Learning   4. Give  5. Take Notice

Every year Kensington conducts an employee engagement survey and for the 2021/2022 financial year, the firm targeted to achieve an average 85% score wellbeing agreement score, 95% of employees participated and a wellbeing agreement score of 94% was achieved, outperforming the 85% target average and surpassing the 77% ETS benchmark.

Community Engagement

Every year Kensington employees participate in a number of projects to help communities across the country. 

Kensington encourages its employees to volunteer by giving one day of paid leave to everyone to enable them to volunteer during work hours. Employees can choose to use their volunteering time to support a charity or community group of their own choice, otherwise Kensington actively engages with charities in the local community and in October 2020 the firm joined a Business Volunteering Scheme that finds opportunities for groups of employees to go out and make a difference. 

In its 2022/23 ESG targets, Kensington aims for at least 25% of employees to take up the volunteering day; in the 2021/22 financial year 26% of employees took up their volunteering day exceeding the 2021/22 target of 20%.

Celebrating the diversity of our colleagues

Kensington also has a Diversity & Inclusion Programme that focusses on Disability, Gender Equality and LGBTQI and continues to work towards facilitating bottom-up change. We have also partnered with the Women Executive Finance Forum to attend events aimed at female leaders in the mortgage industry.

Kensington’s business values gender diversity and aims to shortlist an equal proportion of female and male candidates across all levels of recruitment; in the 2021/2022 financial year Kensington shortlisted 48% male and 52% female roles.