Finance & Investment Marketing & Communications

‘Benedict Lumberjack’ Puts Pension Funds in the Hot Seat Over Deforestation

The smarmy CEO is the latest celebrity character to fuel Make My Money Matter’s campaign to raise awareness of the impacts of our retirement funds. In the spot, he tells viewers how he's benefiting from their hard-earned funds: 'The business of deforestation is on fire, and it’s all thanks to you.'

Published 2 days ago | About a 5 minute read

Image: Make My Money Matter

BAFTA- and Emmy-winning actor Benedict Cumberbatch has created his latest charismatic villain: “Benedict Lumberjack” — the callous CEO of a company cashing in on deforestation, thanks to the savings of UK pensioners.

The chilling spoof ad, created by Lucky Generals for Make My Money Matter — the movement co-founded by UK filmmaker Richard Curtis — reveals the twisted truth behind how pension funds invest our savings.

In the ad, Lumberjack enjoys a steamy sauna while he thanks UK pension holders for the money — which has helped “scorch, slash and burn” rainforests — and ends with a shot of the burning forests heating the sauna.

Directed by Sophia Ray, the ad aims to raise public awareness of the role the pensions industry — in the UK and beyond — plays in financing the companies driving the climate and nature crises. Make My Money Matter hopes that the unsettling performance will make a lasting impression for both savers and industry alike, and spark action at the pace and scale needed to address the crisis before it’s too late.

"It was a dream to direct a project like this — a strong idea for an extremely important cause, brought to life with a mesmerizingly powerful talent like Benedict,” Ray said. “It’s a strong reminder that we can align our financial decisions with our values, and I’m proud to be part of this important conversation for change."

The campaign comes just one year before the 2025 deadline set by the United Nations to eliminate commodity-driven deforestation. In 2024, the Amazon experienced its worst fire season in the past two decades due to agribusiness, animal agriculture and unprecedented droughts. Over £300 billion in pension funds are invested in companies with a high risk of driving deforestation.

A recent Bank of the West report found that while 79 percent of banking customers surveyed are “passionate” about climate change, only 22 percent know whether their bank is financing fossil fuels. Initiatives such as the Fossil Free Banking Alliance have emerged to help steer individual investors toward funds that more closely align with their values, but employees tend to have less input into where their employers direct their retirement funds. Many US companies’ 401(k) plans tend to be invested with the “Big Three” asset managers (BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street Global Advisors), which collectively hold substantial stakes in companies that operate in sectors at high risk of fueling deforestation — including agriculture, mining and fossil fuel extraction; a recent analysis found the Big Three have opposed most of the record number of biodiversity- and deforestation-related resolutions put forward by shareholders in 2024, in favor of shorter-term financial returns.

2023 research from Make My Money Matter and Global Canopy found that even more conscientious pension funds and providers — including the majority within the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and the UN-backed Race to Zero campaign — have not issued comprehensive policies or commitments to tackle deforestation; and Make My Money Matter’s 2024 Climate Action Report found that two-thirds of the UK’s largest workplace pension providers — including Royal London, Scottish Widows and Standard Life — still do not have a public deforestation policy. Deforestation driven by the four highest forest-risk commodities accounts for 11 percent of the world’s carbon emissions; so, effective climate action won’t be possible without curbing it. And these high-carbon investments create significant risk for young employees' future retirements following decades of climate impact.

This industry obtuseness continues despite public appetite for action: Over half of savers in the UK and roughly 40 percent in the US believe the industry should publish policies and become deforestation-free, and thinking the government should require it of pension funds. Campaigns such as Make My Money Matter and As You Sow’s Invest Your Values initiative are working to help UK and US employees, respectively, better understand where their retirement funds are going and urge their employers to provide more future-proof options.

“Benedict Lumberjack shows us the dark truth that our money is being used to destroy the planet and the future we’re saving for. It has never been more clear: Our pension funds are failing us,” says Make My Money Matter senior campaign manager Izzy Howden. “They should be protecting our retirement — but instead, they continue to invest our money in the companies causing deforestation and profiting from the climate and nature crises. We need urgent action now, before it's too late.”

Cumberbatch is the latest star to fuel Make My Money Matter’s cheeky consumer campaign about the hidden impacts of our retirement funds — following Kit Harington and Rose Leslie’s “The Hidden Relationship” and Olivia Colman’s greasily glamorous CEO, “Oblivia Coalmine,” which all spotlight the industry’s ties to fossil fuel companies.

Make My Money Matter is urging individuals and organizations to publicly demand deforestation-free pensions. UK pension holders can contact their employer to ‘green’ their pension via the campaign website.