|
NGOs benchmark banks' sustainability policies |
|
A new report from the NGO coalition Banktrack and WWF compares leading private sector banks’ policies on sustainability issues. The report investigates how far internal policies on lending incorporate international standards on issues ranging from human rights to fisheries and chemicals.
The report, Shaping the Future of Sustainable Finance, concludes that no banks have comprehensive policies on sustainability and only a few have adequate policies on individual issues. The research, which covers 39 banks, looks only at policies rather than implementation as, according to the authors, there is little or no information on how policies are enacted.
Labour policies scored moderately largely owing to the adoption of the UN Global Compact by a number of banks for their own operations. However, the report states that, other than Citigroup, none has a labour policy applicable to its lending operations.
According to the methodology adopted in the report, ABN AMRO and HSBC achieved the highest overall scores though these were only 1.31 out of a possible 4. |
