2X Certification User Agreement

Please read these Terms of Service (“Terms”) carefully before using this platform.

Definitions

Terms defined in the Glossary of Terms 2xcertification.org/resouces/glossary (either directly or by cross-reference to other sources) have the same meanings when they are used here unless they are specifically defined differently here.

2X Certificate is the final official confirmation that an entity is 2X certified. The 2X Certificate is awarded by the 2X Certification Body after the Third-party Verifier has satisfactorily completed the verification and we are comfortable. The decision to award the 2X Certificate is based on the data provided by you as part of the self-assessment as well as the Verification Report.

2X Certification Platform ('Platform') means the tech platform on which the 2X Certification process is hosted. It captures all steps of the 2X Certification process. The 2X Certification Platform is powered by Equilo. The platform has been built specifically for the requirements of the 2X Certification mechanism.

control has the meaning given in section 1124 of the Corporation Tax Act 2010.

Group: in relation to a company, that company, any subsidiary or holding company from time to time of that company, and any subsidiary from time to time of a holding company of that company.

Intellectual Property Rights: patents, utility models, rights to inventions, copyright and related rights, moral rights, trademarks and service marks, business names and domain names, rights in get-up and trade dress, goodwill and the right to sue for passing off or unfair competition, rights in designs, rights in computer software, database rights, rights to use, and protect the confidentiality of, confidential information (including know-how and trade secrets) and all other intellectual property, in each case whether registered or unregistered and including all applications and rights to apply for and be granted, renewals or extensions of, and rights to claim priority from, such rights and all similar or equivalent rights or forms of protection which subsist or will subsist now or in the future in any part of the world.

Third-party Verifier means a third-party who conducts verification under the 2X Certification mechanism that may be appointed by time to time by you, provided that such third-party:

is an independent professional services firm and/or sustainability or gender equity consultancy firm which is regularly engaged in the review, application and monitoring of social and/or ESG issues, standards, processes and/or methodologies;
not an affiliate or otherwise connected to you; and
meets our assessment criteria.

User means any individual or organization using the Platform, including, for the avoidance of doubt, an Entity.

Verification Report means the report prepared and provided by the Third-party Verifier in the format and to the specification required by 2X Global, and upload such Report to the 2X Certification Platform for review of 2X Global prior to review by Entity.

Who we are and how to contact us

The Platform is operated by 2X GLOBAL LIMITED (We or Us). We are registered in England and Wales under company number 13697512 and have our registered office at Crowe U.K. LLP, 55 Ludgate Hill, London, England, EC4M 7JW.

To contact us, please email certification(at)2xglobal.org.

Your Status

You may only use this if you are a Company or a Fund.

By using our Platform you accept these Terms

By using our Platform, you confirm that you accept these Terms and that you agree to comply with them.

Please record your acceptance by confirming in the box at the bottom of this page

If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not use our Platform.

There are other terms that may apply to you

These Terms refer to the following additional terms, which also apply to your use of our Platform:

Our Privacy Policy [2xcertification.org/privacy-policy], which explains how we collect, use and store your personal data.
Our Cookie Policy [https://app.equilo.io/#/cookies-policy], which sets out information about the cookies on our Platform.

The following documents also form part of these Terms:

FAQs: 2xcertification.org/resources/faqs
Glossary of Terms: 2xcertification.org/resources/glossary
User Guide: 2xcertification.org/resources/userguide

You will need to adopt and comply with all the above policies and any other policies and procedures we notify you with from time to time.

We may make changes to these Terms

We amend these Terms from time to time. Every time you wish to use our Platform, please check these Terms to ensure you understand the terms that apply at that time.

We may make changes to our Platform

We may update and change our Platform from time to time including to reflect changes to our products, our Users' needs and our business priorities.

We may suspend or withdraw our Platform

We do not guarantee that our Platform, or any content on it, will always be available, error-free or be uninterrupted. We may suspend or withdraw or restrict the availability of all or any part of our Platform for business and operational reasons. We do not make any representations as to the Platform or the content disclosed as part of the 2X Certification process in respect of fitness or merchantability for a particular purpose and will not accept any liability arising from this failing to meet any specific expectations. We will endeavour to give you reasonable notice of any suspension or withdrawal.

You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our Platform through your internet connection are aware of these Terms and other applicable terms of service, and that they comply with them.

We may transfer this agreement to someone else

We may transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms to another organisation. We will always tell you in writing if this happens and we will ensure that the transfer will not affect your rights under these Terms.

You must keep your account details safe

If you choose, or you are provided with, a user identification code, password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential. You must not disclose it to any third party.

We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these Terms.

If you know or suspect that anyone other than you knows your user identification code or password, you must promptly notify us at certification(at)2xglobal.org.

Your Obligations

You may only use the results of any 2X Certification Self-Assessment for a period of 6 months.

From the start of October 2025, you may only take a 2X Certification Self-Assessment once per annum, otherwise you will have to pay an additional fee.

You must complete the 2X Certification Self-Assessment within 60 days of registration for the 2X Certification Self-Assessment.

You will only be provided with the 2X Certificate once you have paid the appropriate fee to us. The 2X Certificate is valid for two (2) years only as such period is set out on the 2X Certificate time-stamp . Accordingly, you shall not use the 2X Certificate or make use of the 2X Certification for any Company or Fund not certified as part of the 2X Certification process and agree that you will cease use or reference of the then-current 2X Certificate or 2X Certification or any other reference to the 2X Certificate or 2X Certification upon the expiry of such two (2) year period.

Following the expiry of the two (2) year period, you will need to re-certificate your 2X Certificate. Your renewed 2X Certificate will be issued upon a new fee payment following completion of a renewed 2X Certificate Self-Asessment and Third-Party Verification. Pricing of the fee payment will be displayed on the website and may be updated from time to time.

If you want to purchase the optional Level Up package then you will be required to pay an additional amount via the Platform in order to access this.

You will not act in a manner which may negatively impact the reputation, goodwill or brand of us or the 2X Certification Platform. We reserve the right to revoke the 2X Certificate if we become aware of any misrepresentation by you or if a serious complaint is raised against you through our complaints mechanism. Upon revocation of the 2X Certificate, you have no further rights to refer to or represent that you hold that 2X Certification.

You will provide us with all necessary cooperation reasonably requested by us to facilitate the provision of the Platform or the 2X Certification, including:

providing all data required for the provision of the 2X Certification or the Platform (including for the purposes of re-certification of the 2X Certification every two (2) years upon request by us); and
providing us and our subcontractors, agents and partners (including the Third-party Verifier) with all relevant data, cooperation, and assistance that they may need to perform their functions as part of the 2X Certification process, and you hereby permit us to share any such data to members of our Group and its sub-contractors, agents and partners to the extent they require access to such data to perform activities in connection with the 2X Certification process or Platform.

You acknowledge that:

2X Global will not issue the 2X Certificate unless and until the 2X Certification has been completed in a satisfactory standard in accordance with these Terms, and the application has been accepted;
The 2X Certification cannot be obtained by the User if the Verification Report does not include all the information set out in Minimum Requirements for Verification Report and/or is not provided in the format and specification required by 2X Global, and if it does not cover all matters;
2X Global reserves the right to terminate or suspend a User's access to the Platform at any time for breach of these Terms or for any other reason deemed appropriate by 2X Global; and
You have read and understood the 2X Certification User Guide 2xcertification.org/resources/userguide.

How you may use material on our Platform

We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our Platform, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved.

Our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of content on our Platform must always be acknowledged (except where the content is user-generated).

You are permitted to download a copy of the 2X Certification User Guide. You must not use any part of the content on our Platform for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors.

If you print off, copy, download, share or repost any part of our Platform in breach of these Terms, your right to use our Platform will cease immediately and you must, at our discretion, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made (except that you are permitted to print off a copy of these Terms).

All media releases, public announcements and public disclosures by you of, in, or relation to, the Platform or any services provided and the 2X Certification (including the results of any self-assessment completed as part of the 2X Certification), shall be co-ordinated with and approved by us in writing prior to release (provided that we shall not unreasonably withhold or delay its approval upon delivery of the 2X Certification to you). The above restriction does not apply to any announcement intended solely for internal distribution within the Customer or required as a result of any applicable laws.

In particular, you cannot refer to a 2X Certificate or make any statements regarding certification unless you have been issued with a 2X Certificate in accordance with the 2X Certification Process.

The logo and materials contained within the Platform or that we otherwise make available (including as part of the 2X Certification) to you must be used in accordance with the 2X Certification Usage of marketing materials and brand guidelines, as outlined on the website 2xcertification.org/resources/brandguidelines. This includes not altering the logo or using it in inappropriate contexts.

You must use any materials contained within the Platform or otherwise made available to you by us in accordance with all applicable laws and must not use the materials in a way that breaches any rights of any third party or is otherwise misleading or inaccurate.

No text or data mining, or web scraping

You shall not conduct, facilitate, authorise or permit any text or data mining or web scraping in relation to our Platform or any services provided via, or in relation to, our Platform for any purpose, including the development, training, fine-tuning or validation of AI systems or models. This includes using (or permitting, authorising or attempting the use of):

Any "robot", "bot", "spider", "scraper" or other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, code, process or methodology to access, obtain, copy, monitor or republish any portion of our Platform or any data, content, information or services accessed via the same.
Any automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form to generate information [or develop, train, fine-tune or validate AI systems or models] which includes but is not limited to patterns, trends and correlations.

The provisions in this clause should be treated as an express reservation of our rights in this regard, including for the purposes of Article 4(3) of the Digital Copyright Directive ((EU) 2019/790).

You shall not use, and we do not consent to the use of, our Platform, or any data published by, or contained in, or accessible via, our Platform or any services provided via, or in relation to, our Platform for the purposes of developing, training, fine-tuning or validating any AI system or model.

This clause will not apply insofar as (but only to the extent that) we are unable to exclude or limit text or data mining or web scraping activity by contract under the laws which are applicable to us.

Uploading content to our Platform

Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload content directly to our Platform, you must comply with the standards published on our website or made available from time to time.

You warrant that any such contribution complies with those standards, and you are liable to us and indemnify us for any breach of that warranty or where such content infringes the intellectual property rights of any third party, in unlawful or otherwise is uploaded without you obtaining all required consents and approvals. This means you will be responsible for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of warranty.

You own your content, but you are required to grant us a limited licence to use, store and copy that content and to distribute and make it available to others. The rights you license to us are described in the Rights you are giving us to material you upload clause in in the User Agreement found at 2xcertification.org/user-agreement.

We also have the right to disclose your identity to anyone who is claiming that any content posted or uploaded by you to our Platform violates their intellectual property rights or their right to privacy.

Rights you are giving us to use material you upload

When you upload or post content or information to our Platform or share content or information with us (including that relating to you, your gender lens disclosures, your policies and your financing arrangements), you grant us the following rights to use that content:

A worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform that user-generated content in connection with the service provided by the Platform or for our general business purposes (including to make non-sensitive content publicly available on our website as part of our scorecards, for the purposes of benchmarking, comparing Entities, improving the methodology and standards and understanding the demographics of Entities) and across different media including to promote our Platform or the service forever; and
A worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable license for other users, partners or advertisers to use the content forever.

Do not rely on information on this Platform

The content on our Platform or otherwise made available to you is provided for general information only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our Platform. In particular, we make no representation or warranty that such content is sufficient to enable you to comply with applicable laws applicable to you, and any such determination must be made by you in your sole discretion.

Although we make reasonable efforts to update the information on our Platform, we make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether express or implied, that the content on our Platform or that which we provide to you is accurate, complete or up to date.

We are not responsible for websites or third parties we link to

Where our Platform contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. Such links should not be interpreted as approval by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them. We have no control over the contents of those sites, parties or resources.

You will need to appoint a Third-party Verifier in order to complete the 2X Certification and you will need to ensure that they are suitably skilled, qualified and experienced and meet the requirements set out at 2xcertification.org/resources/verifiers. You may appoint a Third-party Verifier of your choice, regardless of whether they have completed the training programme provided by 2X Global. Where the Third-party Verifier has undergone the training, this will be indicated on the 2X Certificate.

In particular, we are not responsible for the acts or omissions of Third-party Verifiers. When you appoint a Third-party Verifier, they act as independent third parties and we take no responsibility or liability for their acts or omissions.

We are not responsible for viruses

We do not guarantee that our Platform will be secure or free from bugs or viruses.

You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programs and platform to access our Platform. You should use your own virus protection software.

You must not introduce viruses or act in a way that prejudices the Platform

You must not misuse our Platform by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful, or otherwise harmfully interacting with our Platform or any part of it. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our Platform, the server on which our Platform is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our Platform or any other equipment or network connected with our Platform. You must not interfere with, damage or disrupt any software used in the provision of our Platform or any equipment or network or software owned or used by any third party on which this Platform relies in any way. You must not attack our Platform via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of-service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our Platform will cease immediately.

You must not use the Platform in a way that:

is unlawful, harmful, threatening, defamatory, obscene, infringing, harassing or racially or ethnically offensive;
facilitates illegal activity;
depicts sexually explicit images;
promotes unlawful violence;
is discriminatory based on race, gender, colour, religious belief, sexual orientation, disability; or
is otherwise illegal or causes damage or injury to any person or property.

You shall not:

attempt to copy, modify, duplicate, create derivative works from, frame, mirror, republish, download, display, transmit, or distribute all or any portion of the Platform or in any form or media or by any means;
attempt to de-compile, reverse compile, disassemble, reverse engineer or otherwise reduce to human-perceivable form all or any part of the Platform;
access all or any part of the Platform in order to build a product or service which competes with the Platform;
use the Platform to provide services to third parties;
license, sell, rent, lease, transfer, assign, distribute, display, disclose, or otherwise commercially exploit, or otherwise make the Platform available to any third party except as permitted under these Terms; or
attempt to obtain, or assist third parties in obtaining, access to the Platform, other than as provided under these Terms.

Our responsibility for loss or damage suffered by you

Subject to the remainder of this section our total liability to you shall not exceed 50% of the amounts paid by you to us in the 12 months prior to the date of any claim.

We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or the negligence of our employees, agents or subcontractors and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

We do not endorse any products, services or third parties.

We exclude all implied conditions, warranties, representations or other terms that may apply to our Platform or any content on it.

We will not be liable to you for any loss or damage, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, even if foreseeable, arising under or in connection with:

use of, or inability to use, our Platform; or
use of, or reliance on, any content displayed on our Platform.

In particular, we will not be liable for:

loss of profits, sales, business, or revenue;
business interruption;
loss of anticipated savings;
loss of business opportunity, goodwill or reputation; or
any indirect or consequential loss or damage.

You shall indemnify us for any fraud or misrepresentation on your part in connection with these Terms or the use of the Platform.

Personal Data

We and you (each, a party) shall comply with any applicable law or binding regulation on data protection or data privacy (Applicable Privacy Law) in relation to any processing of personal data, in connection with accessing the Platform (Relevant Data).

Each party acts as a separate controller of Relevant Data and accordingly shall:

only process the Relevant Data as reasonably necessary to perform its obligations and exercise its rights under the Terms;
give the other party such information in relation to that processing as it reasonably requests from time to time to enable the other party to comply with its obligations under Applicable Privacy Law;
notify the other party in writing if it becomes aware of, or suspects the occurrence of, any personal data breach in relation to those Applicable Privacy Laws in respect of the Relevant Data;
give the other party such information, assistance and co-operation as it reasonably requests to enable it to mitigate any adverse consequences for data subjects arising from any personal data breach notified to it;
notify the other party in writing if it receives any communication from a data subject or competent data protection authority seeking to exercise rights under, or alleging or proposing to investigate an allegation of breach of, Applicable Privacy Law in relation to the Relevant Data.

To the extent that any Relevant Data is processed outside the United Kingdom or European Economic Area, the terms of the transfer shall be governed by a lawful data transfer mechanism in accordance with Applicable Privacy Laws. In these situations both parties will seek to put in place appropriate safeguards to protect personal data. For the purposes of this clause, unless otherwise defined, terms have the meanings given to them in the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679.

Confidentiality

You shall not at any time disclose to any person any confidential information concerning the business, affairs, customers, clients or suppliers of us which relates to us except as permitted in this section.

You may disclose the confidential information that relates to us:

to your employees, officers, representatives, subcontractors, or advisers who need to know such information for the purposes of carrying out the party's obligations under the terms provided that such employees, officers, representatives, contractors, subcontractors, or advisers comply with this section; or

as may be required by law, a court of competent jurisdiction or any governmental or regulatory authority provided that, to the extent permitted by law you first notify us and give us a reasonable opportunity to object.

Which country's laws apply to any disputes?

These Terms, their subject matter and their formation (and any non-contractual disputes or claims) are governed by English law. We and you agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.