Sustainability
Our business practices
CAR Group is a company with a strong moral compass and is committed to strong corporate governance and complying with both the letter and spirit of the law. We build and maintain an ethical culture of integrity, transparency and accountability at all levels.
Material topics
– Ethics and integrity
– Governance and risk management
The following section outlines our approach to addressing and managing these material topics at CAR Group. For a detailed review of our performance in these areas over the past year, please refer to our latest Sustainability Report and Databook.
Ethics and integrity
Ethics and integrity are foundational to how we operate, make decisions, and engage with stakeholders. Our social license to operate is intrinsically tied to maintaining our reputation and good corporate standing so we are a company committed to upholding the highest standards of ethical conduct across all levels of our global operations. We have robust global policies and risk management systems in place to ensure that we act in accordance with the highest ethical standards and conduct business in a way that is compliant with anti‑bribery and anti‑corruption laws. Our governance committees ensure that our actions are consistent with our ethics, and this is especially relevant in areas of new technology, such as AI. We take the attitude that just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should, so we make sure to consider the ethical impacts of our proposed actions.
Anti‑discrimination and speak-up culture
CAR Group is committed to creating safe and inclusive work environments. Unlawful discrimination, harassment of any kind, victimisation, violence and any offensive conduct is not tolerated. All our team members have a role to play in keeping our workplace safe and our Code of Conduct outlines our expectations for how team members should behave towards each other and anyone else they deal with at work.
Our See Something? Say Something! Policy clearly outlines all available avenues for speaking up regarding behaviour that breaches global or local workplace policies, or that feels unsafe, unfair, unethical, or simply ‘not right’. This includes confidential and anonymous options. The health of our speak-up culture is tracked through an ongoing reporting metric embedded in our global People and Culture scorecard, with consistent reporting activity treated as a sign of a healthy culture rather than a concern.
Culture of compliance
We have built a strong culture of compliance over the years. The challenge is continuing to enhance this across our geographically dispersed Group where people have different cultures and experiences. We have addressed this by ensuring the Global Leadership Team are on the same page, understand all the cultures we are fortunate to work with, and demonstrate the right types of behaviours to our people. Our team members are also required to undergo compliance training modules at induction and annually thereafter on a range of topics. As we continue to grow as a Group, it is important that no matter where we are in the world, we have shared policies and principles that guide our behaviours and unite us in making the right decisions.
Governance and risk management
Strong governance and effective risk management are foundational to sustainable value creation. Our governance framework is designed to ensure that strategic, operational, reputational, and financial risks are identified, assessed, and managed in a way that supports innovation without compromising integrity. We have also augmented the Board’s skills and experience by engaging non‑executive directors on the boards of some of our major subsidiaries.
We maintain robust policies, systems, and leadership structures across our global operations, with clear accountability embedded at every level—from the Board and Global Leadership Team to subsidiary boards and business units. This approach enables us to make informed decisions, respond proactively to emerging risks, and uphold the trust of our stakeholders in an increasingly complex and regulated environment.
Our key marketplaces – carsales, Encar, webmotors and Trader Interactive – all have their own management boards with an independent non-executive director. These roles provide several benefits to the local business and to CAR Group, namely:
– Management has a local resource who can offer advice, guidance, and mentorship.
– They provide valuable insight to the other subsidiary board members about the local market and environment.
– They provide periodic updates to the CAR Group Board on the operations of the businesses and insights into the regions in which they operate. While the Board receives monthly management reports from the different businesses and often interacts with local management, this offers them an additional perspective.
Risk management
Managing risk is a continuous process and an integral part of CAR Group’s approach to governance.
Risk and opportunity are intrinsically linked, and we seek to manage risk in ways that minimise the potential for loss, while maximising opportunities for growth and profitability.
Our risk management framework is designed to support us in achieving our strategic and operational objectives. The Board is responsible for determining the Group’s tolerance for different categories of risk, and management aligns the vision, strategy, processes, technology and governance of the Group accordingly.
As CAR Group grows through acquisition and innovation, we naturally become exposed to additional legal and compliance requirements and new and emerging risks. There is also a need to account forjurisdictional and geographical considerations in each of our markets.
Our global risk management framework clearly sets the Board’s expectations for how each business manages risk, as well as the cadence of risk management activities to be conducted at the various levels throughout the organisation. CAR Group operates a Group global risk register supported by country- or region-level registers.
Our risk registers capture key and material risks to the business and assess the nature, likelihood and materiality of the impact of each risk. Each risk includes the key controls implemented to mitigate it, together with key risk indicators that are monitored regularly and reported to Country and Global Leadership teams and the Board / Risk Committee at least three times a year.
In addition to the internal risk management framework, CAR Group has an internal audit function and engages an external auditor, responsible for providing an independent opinion of the financial results of the Group. In undertaking this role, the external auditor also provides comments on the management of risk.
Tax transparency
CAR Group has processes in place to ensure that it complies with applicable tax regulations in each country that it operates in. We also actively monitor and respond to the evolving international tax landscape, including global minimum tax rules and increasing public transparency requirements such as Country-by-Country reporting, adapting our processes as these obligations develop.
