Equality, diversity, and inclusion are important to Stafford and these aspects are covered in our Diversity and Inclusion Policy. This policy is communicated to employees in the way we work and operate every day, and its implementation is the responsibility of the Executive Management Board, HR, Compliance, and all leaders of our business. We continually review and improve policies related to these topics to ensure we build a talented and diverse workforce.

Our approach to diversity and inclusion is to continually try to increase diversity across our group, noting that there is scope for the investment industry in general to improve in this area. The approach we take to keep improving is as follows, however this is not exhaustive:

• The recruitment process continues to explore more options for diversity and inclusion.

• Explore recruitment agents focused on diversity or post on forums.

• Explore requesting anonymized CVs/resumes for the first round of advertised recruitment processes.

• The HR team is undergoing further training on the topic of gender and diversity at work, including attending courses and conferences to learn more about these topics and devise a robust strategy going forwards.

Stafford will pursue many activities to foster greater organizational learning and knowledge sharing within the organization, across all business lines. We continue to develop and improve our internal training and implement policies and procedures related to diversity and inclusion and employees in the broader sense. For example, the importance of diversity and inclusion and ensuring we review a sufficiently diverse candidate pool is also mentioned in our Recruitment Policy and reiterated to all Review Managers at the outset of recruitment processes.