Summary Report

The Trustees are clear about the purpose of the Golden Leaves Trust.  It is to preserve and wherever possible, to enhance the capital value of the Trust to ensure the adequacy of funds to pay for funerals covered by Golden Leaves Funeral Plans as and when they occur.

In order to achieve this, investment performance is closely monitored by the Board of Trustees. In this respect, the Board of Trustees have established an Investment Committee, the purpose of which is to support the Board of Trustees in overseeing the effective management of all investments held within the trust.

Membership

The membership of the committee comprises:

Amanda Williams

Amanda has in-depth investment experience gained over a period of three decades with various institutions including UBS, Shell Pensions and Dresdner RCM Global Investors. More recently,  she has worked for the Bank of England and a period with the International Monetary Fund.

David Dinwoodie

David has over 20 years experience working across the Big $ Accounting and FTSE 100 companies. Specifically, he has worked in the Deloittes Private Equity team liaising with companies such as Blackstone, Silver Group and 3i Group.

Steve Rowland

Steve provides an important link between the funeral industry, the Golden Leaves company and the Golden Leaves Trust. This includes ensuring full compliance to the rules and regulations affecting both the company and the trust.

Responsibilities:

The specific responsibilities of the committee are:

• To review, at least every three years, the investment strategy framework for the trust assets in consultation with the appointed investment managers and any other investment advisory company if deemed appropriate by the Committee.
• To monitor the long term performance of the investment portfolio against the agreed investment objectives, ensuring compliance with the written investment policy.
• To periodically review the approach to investment in both existing and new investment asset classes, having considered any material environmental (including climate change), social and governance matters.
• To establish appropriate performance benchmarks for the investment managers and to regularly monitor and evaluate performance of each appointed investment manager over relevant time horizons.

The Trust’s performance statistics can be found here for 2023  – see attachment