Tyrwhitt Drake takes the reins as CEO at Pensions for Purpose

Ms Tyrwhitt Drake took an unusual route to the top: graduating from the Open University in 2010 while working as an analyst at Jupiter Asset Management, with the bonus of no student debts at the end.

She studied psychology followed by an MSc at Surrey University in 2013. Like so many city folk, she fell into finance, but was drawn in by the potential for scale to achieve change: “You can really have a significant impact by channelling investments into positive social and environmental solutions.”

If you really want to create change, that needs to happen at scale and that requires investors to coalesce around particular goals

Typical of her altruistic nature, she has always been heavily involved in charitable work and is a big supporter of Redstart, a provider of financial education to children in schools.

“If you have an education to better manage your finances it is also a powerful tool against inequality,” she says. A bit of a glutton for punishment, she lists boot camps as a leisure activity.

Since 2007, she has gained a huge amount of experience, with spells at five city firms, including asset managers, fiduciary managers and consultants, most recently at Kempen.

Impact platform to expand further

Joining Pensions for Purpose, the ESG thought leadership platform founded by Karen Shackleton in 2017, was a watershed moment.

With a network that includes the entire investment chain, institutional investors, pension consultants and pension and legal firms, the platform is set up as a non-profit organisation with revenue coming from membership fees, training workshops and investor roundtables. From next year, Ms Tyrwhitt Drake says the organisation will have the Profit for Purpose certification, and will work towards the B Corps Status.

Along with several other sustainability projects, such as A 10 Billion World, she is also behind the Impact Investing Institute’s new principles for impact investing. These four governance principles can be used by pension funds to pursue impact investing, due to be published this year. 

At Pensions for Purpose, Ms Tyrwhitt Drake is focused on expanding its services. “We have been doing roundtables in Australia and partnering with pension groups in the Netherlands, and we want to continue that push,” she says.

“We need to educate investors; we need to encourage them to coalesce round specific goals. Pension fund investors are setting net-zero carbon goals for different years depending on their requirements and some of them are choosing different sustainable goals.

“If you really want to create change, that needs to happen at scale and that requires investors to coalesce around particular goals. Some of that has to come from government. We also need better measurement frameworks,” she continues.

Data still disappoints

The world is changing. The investment industry is no longer reluctant to come to terms with climate change, but its hands are tied as investee companies struggle to provide environmental, social and governance information. 

“Only about half of listed companies report on carbon emissions. That makes it very difficult for the investment managers to provide data on what is happening in the underlying companies they are investing in,” Ms Tyrwhitt Drake says.

She pins her hopes on the government’s recent announcement making the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures fully mandatory across the economy by 2025: “Then it will all start coming together.”