Environmental standards
Minimising our negative impact on the environment and proactively promoting a sustainable way of doing business is an integral part of our business strategy – not only in connection with our lending operations or the provisioning of financial services to our clients, but also in our own day-to-day operations.
We adhere to the following key principles to continuously improve our environmental performance:
Our performance
- Identify the environmental aspects and impacts of our business activities
- Develop and implement measures to mitigate negative environmental impacts
- Use resources as efficiently as possible
- Ensure compliance with relevant legislation and international standards
- Raise awareness regarding environmental and social issues among our staff
- Minimise, where possible, the negative environmental and social impact of our lending operations
- Encourage our clients to invest in an environmentally sound manner
- Seek to work with suppliers who conduct their business in line with our environmental and social standards; engage in communication to positively influence the environmental and social impact of our suppliers’ products and/or operations
Our vision of development entails social and environmentally conscious management, the dissemination of technologies and knowledge, and the creation of jobs. This is why we support businesses which, like us, have realised that economic growth should not be achieved at the expense of the environment.
To accomplish this, we have developed and implemented an environmental management system (EMS) that is based on the three pillars described below. In this way we aim to reduce the internal and external environmental impacts of the ProCredit group, while promoting loans and investments that demonstrate a positive impact on the environment based on defined technical criteria.
Environmental Management in the ProCredit Group
Pillar I
Internal environmental management
Our internal processes and procedures are designed to enable the reduction of our direct environmental footprint. By replacing the banks’ physical infrastructure with alternative, more sustainable solutions and raising awareness of environmental issues in our institutions, we are supporting improved resource consumption.
Pillar II
Management of environmental and social risk in lending
We aim to work with businesses whose activities do not harm the environment or endanger the health, safety and well-being of their staff or neighbours. By applying a prudent credit risk approach, we help minimise possible negative impacts of our lending operations on the environment.
Pillar III
Green lending
We offer green investments and savings in our countries of operation. Green investments concern the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy and environmentally friendly projects, subject to applicable eligibility criteria. We also engage with clients on relevant topics, drawing on our experience in financing to support them as they chart their own decarbonisation pathways.
You can learn more about our EMS and our results achieved so far here.
The key to successful implementation of our EMS is anchoring it within our institutions
As the graphs below show, strategic decisions regarding the EMS are taken by the Group Sustainability Steering Committee and implemented by the Group Sustainability Management team, which also facilitates the introduction and expansion of the EMS in all our banks. At the bank level, the individual environmental committees are responsible for all strategic decisions. Coordinators are assigned by the banks for each pillar in order to ensure the full institutionalisation of the EMS.
Environmental Management System at group level
Environmental Management System at bank level
Strengthening and further developing our EMS requires significant staff involvement and participation at all levels of the ProCredit group. Therefore, continuous staff training, internal awareness raising and in-house expertise are key components of our business philosophy in general and our environmental management approach in particular.
As part of our efforts to continuously improve our environmental management performance, the ProCredit banks have either already obtained or are in the process of obtaining certification of conformity with the international standard ISO 14 001. In addition, the four ProCredit institutions located in Germany, i.e. ProCredit Holding AG, ProCredit Bank AG, ProCredit Academy GmbH and Quipu GmbH, have obtained Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) validation of their environmental management systems. The scale and scope of the validation can be found in the publicly available EMAS statement.