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Stewardship in Private Credit: Active Engagement

  • Responsible Investing

Strong Foundations, Resilient Businesses

At Pemberton, as lenders to Europe’s mid-market, we can help borrowers navigate a fast-changing sustainability landscape through knowledge-sharing, structured dialogue, aligned incentives and collaboration across our asset class.

In 2025 the PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment) set out four practical levers for stewardship in private debt, guidance Pemberton helped shape. We apply all four across our direct lending portfolio to reduce risk and build the strong foundations that underpin resilient businesses and long-term value creation.

Training: Carbon, supply chain and AI workshops, 80+ borrowers reached since 2023, 62% of the portfolio.

Dialogue: Structured reviews and an annual ESG questionnaire. In 2025, 87% disclosed carbon data and the questionnaire response rate reached 95%.

Aligned Incentives: ESG margin ratchets link cost to performance, held by 69% of borrowers in 2025.

Collaboration: A seat on the PRI Private Debt Advisory Committee.

Together, these four levers reached 57% of our direct lending portfolio in 2025, a meaningful scale-up in stewardship activity. See how we put this into practice in the video below. To read more about our activities, read our Responsible Investing Report 2025-26.

Niamh Whooley

Managing Director, Head of Responsible Investing

Niamh Whooley is Managing Director and Head of Responsible Investing at Pemberton. She is responsible for driving the firm’s continued growth trajectory as an ESG pioneer in the alternative credit direct lending space.

More about Niamh Whooley

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