Campaign
How to Make Your Money Green – Pensions, Banks and Insurance That Don’t Wreck the Planet
October 02, 2025
Here’s the thing: your money might be trashing the planet right now – and you probably don’t even know it. The bank you use, the pension your employer signed you up to, even your insurance company… most of them are quietly pumping billions into fossil fuels, deforestation, and industries with blood on their hands.
Sounds grim, right? But here’s the good news; you don’t have to let them. With a few choices: switching your pension, bank account, or insurer, and choosing investments that actually do good you can take back control. You can make your money work for the world you want to live in, not against it. And it’s easier than you think.
Pensions – the sleeping giant of climate change
Let’s start with the big one: pensions.
The campaign Make My Money Matter – set up by Richard Curtis – showed us something staggering: greening your pension is 21 times more powerful in cutting carbon than giving up flying, going veggie, and switching energy supplier combined. Twenty-one times!
That’s because the UK pensions pot is colossal: nearly £3 trillion. But instead of building the future, this money is bankrolling the past. For every tenner you put in, two quid goes to deforestation. UK pension schemes have almost £88 billion tied up in fossil fuels, including BP and Shell. That works out as £3,000 of your money – per person – fuelling the climate crisis.
The average UK pension helps spew 23 tonnes of CO2 a year into the atmosphere – like driving nine family cars at once. Collectively, UK pensions enable 330 million tonnes of emissions every year – more than the country’s entire carbon footprint. Madness.
MMMM’s Climate Action Report 2025 called out the industry for still financing climate destruction – and warned it’s putting the retirements of ordinary savers at risk. But it also highlighted the flip side: if pensions were redirected, they could put £1 trillion into climate solutions by 2035. That’s half the money Britain needs to hit net zero.
So how do you get a green pension? A real one commits to net zero across its entire portfolio by 2050, halves emissions by 2030, and invests in renewables, biodiversity, and other real-world solutions.
If you’ve got a workplace pension, you’re not powerless. You can:
Switch to the greenest fund your provider offers.
Push your employer to move everyone’s money into sustainable options.
Use guides like the Good Shopping Guide’s ethical pension rankings to see who’s walking the walk.
According to them, Aviva, PensionBee and Interactive Investor are among the best. Vanguard, Nutmeg and Bestinvest? Among the worst. And if you want more detail, Make My Money Matter’s Green Pension Guide is a solid place to start.
Green investments – put your money where it matters
If you’re happy with your pension, or you’ve already switched, what’s next? Investments.
“Green investment” isn’t just a buzzword. It means choosing assets that actively benefit the planet:
Green stocks – companies with strong climate action.
Green bonds – funding specific projects like renewable energy or rewilding.
Green funds – bundles of sustainable businesses, spreading risk and impact.
Greenbank Investments put it well: sustainable investing isn’t just good for the planet, it’s good for your pocket. More and more investors believe it offers the best chance of long-term profits – because let’s be real, companies ignoring climate change don’t have a future.
You could back renewables, green buildings, sustainable farming, clean transport, or recycling. But – and it’s a big but – beware of greenwashing. Plenty of funds slap a leaf on their website and carry on investing in oil and gas. Do your homework. Cross-check with campaigns like #MoveTheMoney, which is backed by the UN and helps individuals and institutions shift finance out of fossil fuels.
Insurance – who’s your money really protecting?
Insurance isn’t just about peace of mind – insurers invest huge sums of policyholders’ money. And too often, it goes to dirty industries.
The Good Shopping Guide’s ethical insurance ratings show that some of the biggest UK names are funding arms dealers and oppressive regimes, never mind fossil fuels.
Globally, the Insure Our Future campaign is shining a light on how insurers still prop up oil, gas and coal. Their demand is simple: stop insuring new fossil projects immediately, and phase out existing cover in line with 1.5°C. Because without insurance, fossil fuel expansion grinds to a halt.
So it’s worth checking – does your insurer’s money line up with your values? If not, you’ve got options.
Banks – the dirtiest of them all
Now for the easiest switch of all – your bank account.
Banks are the worst offenders when it comes to financing fossil fuels. The Banking on Climate Chaos report 2025 names names. JPMorgan Chase is the world’s number one fossil fuel funder, chucking $53.5bn into climate destruction in 2024 alone. And here in the UK, Barclays and HSBC are right up there – both quietly pulling out of the UN’s Net-Zero Banking Alliance when it didn’t suit them.
According to Bank.Green, the dirtiest UK banks are:
Barclays
HSBC
Santander
Lloyds
NatWest
Standard Chartered
And the cleanest? Triodos, Nationwide, Metro Bank, the Co-op Bank, and OakNorth. These guys don’t touch fossil fuels.
Switching is easy. The Current Account Switch Service does all the heavy lifting – direct debits, standing orders, wages – moved automatically. No excuses.
Systemic change – and why individual action still matters
Now, some people say: “Why bother? It’s all about systemic change.” And I get that – I’ve been banging that drum for decades. But here’s the truth: moving your money is systemic change.
Banks, pension funds and insurers only exist because of us – our wages, our savings, our premiums. If we shift them, we shift the system.
And it sends a powerful signal. Politicians ignore protests, but they don’t ignore billions moving out of fossil fuels and into climate solutions. That’s leverage. That’s power.
Friends of the Earth’s guide to green finance has some great practical tips for getting started.
Final thought
Christiana Figueres – the woman who delivered the Paris Climate Agreement – put it simply: “Put your money where you want the world to go.”
So let’s do that. Let’s move it out of oil, coal and gas. Out of arms deals and corrupt regimes. And into renewables, rewilding, sustainable food, and the green industries of tomorrow.
We don’t need to wait for politicians to grow a spine. We can start today. Because it’s our money. Our future. And we get to choose which side of history it funds…:)
Useful links to get started:
