Why You Can't Get to Net Zero Without Your Suppliers

As Resilience and Supplier Oversight Director at Aegon UK, I’ve seen firsthand how ESG risk has climbed the agenda in third-party decision-making.

When prospective clients became interested in our environmental and social credentials, the message became clear: ESG is no longer a box-ticking exercise – it’s a business imperative.

That pressure has cascaded throughout the vendor ecosystem, pushing firms like ours to reassess how we engage with our suppliers.

We operate with a lean structure – about 600 suppliers in total. But boiling the ocean simply isn’t an option. Instead, we focused our ESG assessments on a high-impact subset of around 50 suppliers. 

These include our top-tier strategic partners, property-related vendors like those handling cleaning and catering, and others that account for significant spend.

Those 50 suppliers represent around 8 percent of our total supply chain, but approximately 88% of our total spend. 

The vast majority of the money we spend on purchased goods and services is covered, which is important from an emissions point of view due to the way that emissions can be calculated.. 

Our own scope 1 and 2 emissions – from things like offices and fleet – make up just 9% of our total footprint. The other 91% comes from scope 3, and the largest portion of that – about 80% – is from purchased goods and services. 

So, how do you get to net zero if you don’t control this aspect of your emissions? If we can’t talk our suppliers into reducing their emissions, then we’ll never get there.