More than a tick-box: our B Corp blog

More than a tick box: why we support both B Corp and the Better Business Act

By Claire Mellon, Co-founder and Chief Client Officer

From our earliest conversations about Cohesion, we were clear on one thing: if we were going to build a financial planning firm, it had to be grounded in responsibility, not just revenue.

Before we talked about solutions or branding, we talked about what it would mean to balance commercial success with social responsibility and how we could create a business that felt aligned with our values from the outset. That’s why becoming a Pending B Corp and supporting the Better Business Act were decisions that felt entirely natural to us.

The two are often mentioned together and understandably so. They are connected, however they are not the same thing and understanding the difference is important.

Certified B Corporations, or B Corps, are companies verified by B Lab to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. It is voluntary, structured and independently assessed and asks individual businesses to examine how they operate and to evidence the standards they meet.

The Better Business Act is a UK campaign led by B Lab UK and seeks to amend Section 172 of the Companies Act so that directors are legally required to consider people, planet and long-term impact alongside profit. Rather than measuring individual companies, it seeks to reshape the framework within which all companies operate.

One focuses on how a business performs in practice. The other seeks to evolve the rules that guide business behaviour more broadly and we believe both matter.

B Corp provides accountability at a company level, gives structure to our intentions and forces us to document, measure and improve how we operate. It encourages transparency and continuous development rather than vague statements about purpose.

At the same time, the legal framework within which businesses operate inevitably shapes behaviour. If directors are formally required to balance shareholder interests with the impact on employees, communities and the environment, then long-term thinking becomes part of the architecture of business, not simply an optional extra for those who choose it.

Supporting the Better Business Act isn’t about politics, it’s about clarity and consistency and recognising that if we want businesses to consider long-term social and environmental impact, the rules should reflect that expectation.

When we founded Cohesion, we did not want to build a firm that treated purpose as marketing language. We wanted governance, responsibility and long-term thinking to be foundational. Becoming a Pending B Corp is one step in that journey. Supporting the Better Business Act is another.

Neither is about claiming perfection and neither is about signalling virtue. They are about structure, accountability, intent and contributing, in our own small way, to a business environment where doing the right thing is not exceptional but expected.

This is more than a tick box. It’s a framework for how we choose to operate.