Recently, Xinhuanet and the Research Center for Corporate Social Responsibility of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences jointly sponsored the 6th China Corporate Social Responsibility Summit and released the “White Paper on Chinese CSR Reports”. With its outstanding achievements in performing social responsibilities, practicing sustainable development and serving real economy, Industrial Bank (IB) won the “Prize of 2013 Outstanding Enterprise in Corporate Social Responsibility”.
In the meantime, as shown in the list of “2013 Top 100 Chinese CSR Reports in Terms of Overall Scores”, IB ranked No. 30 among all China’s enterprises and No. 4 in the banking industry.
In the address to the summit, Tian Shubin, President of Xinhuanet, said: “Against the background of the new era, we should keep updating our social responsibility concept. Not only should the performance of corporate social responsibility be combined with the improvement of competitive edges of enterprises and realization of transformation and innovation, but also be combined with the China Dream to realize national rejuvenation.”
As noted by the outsiders, IB has incorporated the pursuit of harmonious unification of economy, society and environment into its own development objectives on its own initiative, and established the sustainable governance philosophy to “explore different ways to promote the bank to practice social responsibilities and construct a good relationship where human being coexists with the nature, environment and society harmoniously” in 2008. Moreover, it has incorporated the philosophy into its business management concept and innovatively put forward the way to perform corporate social responsibilities through “obtaining reasonable profits while bringing benefits to the stakeholders” to explore a commercial model and social responsibility practice model in which a win-win result can be achieved between the bank and the society. Besides showing great enthusiasm in social activities for public benefits (donating more than RMB 100 million in total), IB pays more attention to practicing social responsibility through products and services, enriching concept and connotation of domestic banks in performing corporate social responsibility.
In 2013, IB issued the corporate social responsibility index system and instruction manual for information report suitable to its own situation, further advancing the specialized management and normalized operation of works related to social responsibility. Thus, IB has effectively embedded into all business lines and management departments the management of social responsibility from specifying the sustainable governance philosophy, proposing the social responsibility philosophy of “obtaining reasonable profits while bringing benefits to the stakeholders”, endowing the board of directors with the functions of formulating social responsibility and sustainable development strategies and policies, and monitoring, etc., to establishing the hierarchical work leading groups based on the head office and branches and creating specialized management organs, and to the normalization of linking work mechanism for head office and branches. In addition, it has also incorporated social responsibility into the overall assessment indexes for organs, establishing a complete set of management system and working mechanism.
“Over years, we have stuck to such practice. Both loans for energy conservation and emission reduction projects and the ‘bank-bank platform’ for institutional cooperation were all typical cases that the Bank performed social responsibility and realize commercial value”, said Board Chairman Gao Jianping of IB in an interview with the media.
As the forerunner of green finance in China, IB has been advancing toward the objective of building an all-sided green bank and adhered to guide all economic players to develop green economy through business activities. By the end of November 2013, IB has granted green finance based financing of RMB 333.1 billion to over 1,000 enterprises across China accumulatively, reducing the emission of CO2, SO2 and chemical oxygen demand (COD) by 68.6775 million tons, 901,200 tons, and 43,600 tons respectively.
Meanwhile, IB has clustered a large group of banking institutions via the bank-bank platform to practice the inclusive finance and serve the “Agriculture, Rural Area and Farmers” collaboratively. By the end of 2013, the bank-bank platform of IB has had 474 signed banks, connecting more than 25,800 outlets. Via the vast service network of the bank-bank platform, IB has, by a variety of means including technology output, talent training, and spreading outstanding financial products to the rural area, helped small- and medium-sized financial institutions in the rural area to extend their service reach, break through the payment and settlement bottlenecks, and enrich service categories, enabling the cities of the third and fourth tiers and rural areas enjoy modern financial services, and playing an important role for rural financial institutions to better serve the real economy and the “Agriculture, Rural Area and Farmers”.
Chairman Gao pointed out, “we hope not only to help the development of relevant industries by allocating resources of IB to drive energy conservation and environmental protection directly, but more to erect a banner for calling upon more banks and enterprises to assume their social responsibilities so as to build a “Beautiful China” with harmonious development of economy and environment”.
Initiated by Xinhuanet and sponsored by the Research Center for Corporate Social Responsibility of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences under the joint sponsorship of the News Research Institute of Xinhua News Agency, Xinhua Daily Telegraph, Economic Information Daily and Reference News, “China Corporate Social Responsibility Summit” has been held for five times consecutively, boasting extensive influence in the industry.