News

Sustainability

At our core, we are a stakeholder-centric company. Incorporated as a public benefit corporation (“PBC”) under Delaware law and certified as a B Corporation by B Lab, we pride ourselves in our environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) initiatives and strive to achieve our mission to financially empower the next generation. To assess and prioritize which ESG topics are most important to our business and stakeholders, we conducted a materiality assessment in 2023, applying a double materiality methodology that considers the impact of certain topics on both our business and our stakeholders. This assessment was intended to help us focus our time and effort on ESG topics that have the most significant impacts, risks, and opportunities. As a result of this risk assessment, we identified twelve topics that we believe are important to us and our stakeholders. We grouped these topics into four pillars representing the keys to our sustainability and success: justice, integrity, stewardship, and advancement. To support our assessment, we referenced third-party sustainability standards in determining our overall approach to sustainability, including the IFRS’ Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards and B Lab’s Impact Assessment framework.

Justice

We view justice as the pursuit of equity and fairness. We have identified three topics related to justice that we believe are highly important to our business and stakeholders:

  • Financial Accessibility: Financial empowerment and equitable credit access underpins our business operations. We primarily lend to underserved consumers using a proprietary underwriting system that considers traditional and non-traditional sources in making our credit limit decisions. Further, we help our consumers build their payment records through our optional Sezzle Up feature.
  • Diversity and Inclusion: Diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential aspects of our operations across many stakeholder groups, including employees, merchants, and consumers. Maintaining a diverse and inclusive company allows us to work with stakeholders from a broad range of backgrounds. We also have initiatives aiming to celebrate diversity in our merchant base, such as highlighting Black-owned businesses in our merchant store directory.
  • Employee Security and Wellness: Our employees are our greatest asset at Sezzle; therefore, we aim to provide competitive compensation, benefits, and perks. We regularly send out employee satisfaction surveys to allow us to gain insight into specific topics and monitor employee security and happiness. In addition to competitive base pay, most of our Sezzlers have equity in the Company via equity awards under our equity incentive plans. We believe that having our employees own a part of the Company makes everyone more engaged and leads to better overall performance. In addition, employees receive annual bonuses if certain company, team, and individual goals are met during the year. We also offer comprehensive benefits, which include medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability insurance, paid time off, volunteer time off, gym membership discounts, commuter benefits, and company-matching retirement plans.

Integrity

In our view, integrity is showing consistent, uncompromising honesty. We accomplish this at Sezzle through good governance, listening to our stakeholders, and setting an ethically strong tone at the top. The three significant topics related to integrity at Sezzle are:

  • Governance and Controls: We have a strong system of corporate governance and controls. Our board of directors is majority independent, with each Board Committee comprised entirely of independent members. In addition, we have an anti-corruption program that includes a code of conduct applicable to all employees and partners and an anonymous, confidential ethics hotline. More information about our corporate governance can be found here.
  • Integrated Decision-Making: Management and the Board of Directors evaluate if we are meeting our overall mission and maintaining our stakeholders’ interests as a factor in our decision-making process. We also regularly report key sustainability performance indicators to the Board of Directors to inform them about our sustainability efforts.
  • Workplace Culture: We strive to foster an ethical, fun, and transparent culture at Sezzle that embodies our values. This includes initiatives such as monthly town halls and quarterly inter-department surveys.

Stewardship

In our view, stewardship is the responsible and intentional management of our stakeholders' resources and information—including managing the credit we extend, stakeholder data, and natural resources. The three significant topics related to stewardship at Sezzle are:

  • Responsible Lending: The Sezzle Platform extends credit to traditionally underserved individuals; therefore, we value careful monitoring and management of the credit we offer. Failure to manage the impact of our product or our marketing could cause our consumers to enter into cycles of debt or experience other adverse product outcomes. Additionally, our marketing team follows an ethical framework so as not to engage in predatory advertising.
  • Data Security and Management: Through the ordinary course of business, we collect, store, process, transfer, and use a wide range of confidential information, including personally identifiable information, for various purposes. Therefore, it’s important to us that we are transparent with our stakeholders about how we handle and protect their sensitive data. Our website has a publicly available data and privacy policy that provides clear and concise information about how we use consumer data. Further, we do not sell any data to third parties. For more information about data security and management, refer to Item 1C, “Cybersecurity,” of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K.
  • Environment and Climate Change: Despite being a remote-first company, the environment and climate change are still important to us. We measure our greenhouse gas emissions and are taking steps to set targets related to our emissions and implement programs that help reduce our negative impact on the environment to meet the science-aligned goal of limiting global temperatures from rising above 1.5°C.

Advancement

We believe advancement is continuously identifying and improving our products to maximize stakeholder impact. The three significant topics related to advancement at Sezzle are:

  • Product Innovation: Our product aims to innovate credit for traditionally underrepresented consumers. We seek to identify new product opportunities that align with our stakeholders’ interests, utilize stakeholder feedback in our decision-making process, and advocate for community social and environmental initiatives related to our products' impact.
  • Community Reinvestment: We recognize that our community contributed to our successes. To that extent, we value giving back to our community through economic, social, and environmental reinvestment and philanthropy. We engage in initiatives and opportunities that create lasting benefits for our communities, such as offering a full-ride scholarship to a student pursuing a college degree in computer science, partnering with charities, including Movember and Bolder Options, and offering employees paid time off to volunteer in their communities.
  • Employee Development: We devote resources to our employees’ personal and professional development. We offer our employees tools and resources to keep their technical, soft, and life skills relevant in today’s environment, including leadership training and a budget for professional development. In addition, we also provide regular feedback to all employees, help them grow and prosper in their professional roles, and offer sabbaticals to all employees every five years of tenure.

Questions for the Sezzle Investor Relations team? Email us at investorrelations@sezzle.com.