SUSTAINABILITY IN THE FAST LANE:
CARWOW’S ESG POLICY

INTRODUCTION

With an industry-leading automotive marketplace and world-famous YouTube Channel*, spanning the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain, we recognise we have a responsibility to manage and reduce our environmental impact, whilst promoting greater positive social change. Our business model gives us a unique opportunity to play a key role in driving greater sustainability across the sector.

“ESG” means using Environmental, Social, and Governance factors to assess the sustainability of a company. An issue is material to us if it significantly impacts our business or strategic priorities, and if it's viewed as being important to our stakeholders.

Read our ESG Impact Report 2023

Our ESG approach focuses on:

Nature & Climate

People & Community

Governance

ESG Overview

Our relationship with nature and our climate

Our goal is to reduce our environmental footprint. As we develop and expand, we need to continuously monitor the impact our business decisions and operations have on the environment - we are committed to playing a key role in the automotive sector’s transition to Net Zero.

Our relationship with people and our communities

Through innovative tech solutions and our ESG performance, we strive to build a sustainable, equitable, healthy and diverse community. This includes everyone from our employees to our customers, partners to suppliers. We aim to drive change across the industry inspiring greater social responsibility and sustainability. This spans increasing the ESG-related benefits enabled by our products and services, promoting more diversity across the sector and supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Our accountability, transparency and business ethics

As a rapidly growing business, building long-term, responsible operations alongside sustainable commercial success starts with the company’s leadership. This includes how we govern ourselves and our impacts on our people, our communities, our industry and the wider environment. We strive to balance decarbonisation with scaling, maintaining adaptability in order to face future challenges. We’ll ensure resilience and effectiveness with rigorous oversight of our internal control and risk management.

This approach shapes everything we do – from strategy and policy creation to designing and operating our platform. We’ll collaborate with stakeholders and report our progress transparently.

Note, for simplicity, Carwow uses the terms Sustainability and ESG interchangeably.

ABOUT THIS POLICY

This policy outlines our business practices related to the ESG issues most important to the long-term health of Carwow. It also defines the company-wide commitments we are making to achieve our sustainability ambitions within and beyond our own offices.

Its purpose is to realistically reflect where we are on our ESG journey while setting the ambition for continuous improvement and increased positive impact.

It’s designed to support the assessment of our sustainability approach, to provide a way for our investors and critics to measure our accountability, and to complement our Code of Conduct - the moral guidelines for all our employees.

This ensures a top-down culture of effective governance, to provide a framework to guide daily actions, against which we’ll report our progress. Through its application, we also aim to build common ground for our partners and other stakeholders.

ESG is arguably the biggest recent evolution in corporate responsibility it’s not a static business practice. Carwow is growing, and change is inevitable as we scale. As a result, we’ll review this policy regularly and modify as and when we need to. It’ll be improved and refined as we progress our ESG approach and continue to aim higher.

Policy Overview

Who is this policy for?

This policy applies to all members of the organisation; managing ESG issues is a team sport.

We expect every Carwower to participate in reducing negative environmental impacts that result from our business operations, commit to creating positive social change, and work together to create improved governance.

We’ve chosen to make this policy public in all our markets, so our stakeholders, both internal and external, know where our ESG focus lies. Here we can also provide some examples of activities we are pursuing or will pursue, on our journey.

How is this policy governed?

To assist the Board of Directors (the “Board”) in the exercise of its responsibilities, it delegates oversight of this policy to the company’s ESG Impact Committee (the “ESGIC”). Review of this policy by the ESGIC is undertaken annually.

It is expected that this policy will change with the company’s growth. Any required updates or amendments to the policy are agreed through the Committee and approved by the Board before publication on our website.

More details about our ESG Impact Committee can be found in the section, Our Governance Commitments, below.

Our policy commitments

Embedded in our commitments is our bold vision to transform the automotive landscape into a more sustainable and equitable place.

We recognise that the automotive industry’s sustainability journey will be longer than that of others. We must work harder than tech businesses in other industries to achieve this transformation.

We want to reduce our own environmental impact, empower our customers with tools to make informed, sustainable choices and, together with our partners, foster an inclusive, environmentally and socially responsible industry.

These commitments are just a starting point, not the final destination - we’ll expand on them as our ESG approach progresses.

ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENTS

We commit to measuring our carbon footprint, reducing our environmental impact and to reaching Net Zero by 2040.

Find out more

SOCIAL COMMITMENTS

Carwow was born to revolutionise the automotive industry by making it fairer and easier for customers to change cars - giving them all they need to have total confidence in their decision.

Find out more