MANAMA: Bahrain Islamic Bank (BisB) plans to embed sustainability at the core of its business by the first quarter of 2022 and establish an integrated management model, assign the requisite steering committees, and formulate a corporate governance model.
The bank plans to bring in eco-friendly solutions and policies to reduce the carbon footprint, form a policy to promote employee diversity and emerge as an equal opportunity employer.
This follows the announcement of the bank’s partnership with Sustainability Excellence, a sustainability reporting and assessment specialist, to support the bank’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives and plans.
This also follows the formulation of a three-year sustainability roadmap, whereby the bank aims to position itself as a vital purpose and impact-driven player by 2023, while benefitting from recognised ESG leadership and strengthening its dominant market position as the lender of choice in high sustainability impact sectors.
The strategy has clearly defined key performance indicators (KPI) assigned to specific departments for every year of the strategic roadmap.
The plan is based on clearly defined tactical pillars. The first pillar, Responsible Banking, focuses on achieving sustainability-driven growth by driving a shift towards sustainable finance, enhancing the ESG criteria in financing activities, and enhancing processes and policies on financial inclusion.
The remaining pillars tackle various stakeholder priorities, namely, improving the customer experience in a sustainable manner, nurturing the internal employee workforce, investing in the community, preserving natural resources, and finally, establishing ESG governance mechanisms and implementing ethical financial behaviour.
Commenting, BisB chief executive Hassan Jarrar said: “The decision to develop a roadmap for sustainability at an executive level resonates strongly with our ongoing commitment to driving digitisation in the financial industry, by launching innovative banking solutions to make traditional banking less complicated and more intuitive.
“One of the key pillars of this newly formed sustainability roadmap, Enhancing Customer Experiences, has consistently remained at the core of our priorities underlined by our promise of simplifying money matters by providing solutions that harness the power of advanced technology. We plan to continue to employ the ultimate level of transparency when it comes to our customers, safeguarding their data and privacy, and seeking to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction and care, all while integrating sustainability-oriented product and services into our portfolio of financing solutions in the future.”
As part of the first leg of the sustainability roadmap, BisB plans to continue to enhance its ability to attract and retain female Bahraini talent in leadership roles, train an ESG team, and build internal expertise and capabilities in high impact sectors, consistently assessing ESG risks in financing and investment.
avinash@gdn.com.bh
&uuid=(email))