A three-year initiative aiming to further corporate
social responsibility (CSR) standards among Dutch banks has marked
its launch with the release of the Honest Bank Guide – a lengthy
report assessing the ethical policies of banks in the Netherlands
across a range of metrics.
The report, the brainchild of four organisations – Oxfam Novib,
Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth and trade union
federation FNV – analysed the CSR policies of 12 Dutch
institutions: Rabobank, ING, ABN AMRO, Fortis, SNS, Robeco, Aegon,
ASN Bank, DSB Bank, SNS Regio Bank, Friesland Bank and Triodos
Bank. However, the study did not seek to find an overall “winner”,
advising, instead, that calculating total scores or averages would
“obscure the weak spots that all banks have. All banks have areas
in which they do not yet have well-developed policies”.
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Nonetheless, the publication of the study has created a degree
of controversy: Rabobank, the Dutch co-operative regularly credited
with a strong commitment to CSR, labelled the report a “missed
opportunity” because it sought to examine only the contents of each
bank’s CSR policies rather than the way these were put into
practice.
Such concerns were addressed in the report, which noted that
future editions may well investigate banks’ application of their
socially responsible policies. Concluding that one Dutch bank was
fairer or more ethically minded than another was not the report’s
intention, the authors said.
The report has been accompanied by an online table enabling
Dutch consumers to discover the bank which best corresponds with
their own ethical values. The website was accessed by over 27,000
visitors in the first five days of launch, with many consumers
already likely to be reconsidering their banking choices given the
major changes that haven taken place in the Dutch financial
services industry over the past 18 months.
Both Fortis and ABN AMRO have now effectively been broken up and
placed in the hands of the state, while ING has twice gone to the
government for aid and is now undergoing a major cost-cutting
exercise (see News Digest).
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By GlobalDataThe principle themes covered by the report – biodiversity, toxic
substances and health, climate change, labour, human rights,
weapons, tax and corruption and transparency and accountability, as
well as policies on agriculture, fishing, mining, manufacturing,
forestry, mining and metals, oil and gas and inter-bank lending –
form a comprehensive overview of banks’ CSR practices. Despite the
report’s refusal to classify banks according to their performance
in the study, some broad conclusions can be drawn.
Fortis, for instance, in general scored more poorly than peers
including ABN AMRO, ING and Rabobank, though in many cases this was
due a lack of clear conditions in the bank’s policy statements.
High scorers
The most consistently high-scoring banks were ASN Bank and
Triodos Bank, both of which are run on an explicitly ethical basis.
Rabobank, the country’s leading bank by deposits and one which
similarly prides itself on its sustainable stance, likely had both
ASN and Triodos in mind when it called for future reports to be
“complied in a balanced manner”.
The bank said in a statement: “[Our] strategy can be best
defined as ‘making the sustainable commonplace and the commonplace
sustainable’”, pointing to its efforts to fund sustainable
initiatives in hitherto less environmentally-friendly sectors such
as the fuel industry.
In contrast, Rabobank claimed, “the strategy of sustainable
niche banks concentrates almost entirely on ‘making the sustainable
commonplace’, based on a conscious decision to minimise activity in
old sectors and industries as much as possible. This decision
consequently requires acknowledging a less broadly-based social
responsibility. This fact should have been stated in the Honest
Bank Guide report.”
|
Ethical banking |
|||
|
Netherlands – selected bank |
|||
|
ING |
Rabobank |
Triodos |
|
|
Biodiversity |
4 |
2 |
5 |
|
Toxic substances and health |
2 |
2 |
4 |
|
Climate |
2 |
4 |
5 |
|
Labour |
3 |
4 |
5 |
|
Human rights |
3 |
3 |
5 |
|
Weapons |
2 |
3 |
5 |
|
Taxes and corruption |
3 |
3 |
5 |
|
Transparency and accountability |
2 |
4 |
3 |
|
Average |
2.625 |
3.125 |
4.625 |
|
1 = lowest score (no policy). 5 = highest Source: Honest Bank Guide |
|||
