On June 26, the Conference for Release of 2013 CSR Report for Chinese Banking Industry and the Commendation for Corporate Social Responsibility of China Banking Association (CBA) was held in Beijing. With its outstanding achievements in self-conscious performance of social responsibilities in the areas including practice of inclusive finance and green finance, and sharing for promoting development and facilitating sustainability progress, Industrial Bank (IB) was honored the “Annual Best Corporate Social Responsibility Institution Award” and “Annual Best Green Finance” for the fourth consecutive year. Meanwhile, the bank also won the “Award for Outlet with Special Contribution”, and Board Chairman Gao Jianping of IB was honored the title of “Annual Leading Figure for Social Responsibility” for the second consecutive year.
As learnt by the reporter, the donations made by IB to the outside for fight against earthquake, disaster relief, school assistance and poverty alleviation totaled RMB 55 million only in 2013. Nonetheless, the bank does not only stay within the areas of public benefit and charity in practicing its social responsibility. As early as 2007, IB established the work leading group for social responsibility headed by Board Chairman Gao Jianping, with a view to advancing works related to social responsibility. On that basis, the bank established the corporate governance philosophy of sustainable development to “explore different ways to promote the bank to practice social responsibility and construct a good relationship where human being coexists with the nature, environment and society harmoniously”. Moreover, it has incorporated the philosophy into its business strategy 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 win-win results can be achieved between the banking and the society.
“Only looking at corporate social responsibility from a strategic point of view can we throw the greatest positive influence to the society and achieve sustainability at the same time”, said Gao Jianping to the media upon mentioning the significance of corporate social responsibility.
Guided by this philosophy, IB has made active practice in the area of inclusive finance for years, enabling more people to enjoy the modern convenient and efficient services. For instance, based on the “bank-bank platform”, IB has established a cooperative and win-win mechanism, with which both upstream and downstream enterprises of the value chain jointly bear social responsibility, and which has assembled a large group of small- and medium-sized banks to provide services to cities of the third and fourth tiers and “Agriculture, Rural Area and Farmers” jointly. By the end of April 2014, the “bank-bank platform” of the bank has had 497 signed banks, networking more than 31,000 counter pass outlets. In other words, under this kind of inclusive finance model, any customer of Heilongjiang Rural Credit Cooperative can enjoy universal saving and withdrawal around China with a card (deposit book) of the bank, and residents living in a county of Qinghai can buy wealth management products of IB at the business outlet of the Bank of Qinghai… Meanwhile, IB has also actively opened community banks at the doorway of homes of residents, enabling urban residents to enjoy convenient financial services nearby.
At the same time, as the forerunner of green finance and the only bank adopting the Equator Principles in China, IB has, over years, stridden toward the objective of building an all-sided green bank and adhered to boosting enterprises to save energy, reduce emission and develop green economy through innovation in green finance. By the end of May 2014, IB has granted green financing totaling RMB 414 billion, with the financing balance hitting RMB 205.3 billion. Each year, the supported projects could save 23.52 million tons of coal equivalents, reduce 68.80 million tons of carbon dioxide, utilize more than 17.25 million tons of solid waste in an integrated manner. It is equivalent to shutting off 157 thermal power plants of 100 MW or stopping running 70,000 taxis for 47 years.
It is said that, the appraisal aims to push forward the CSR management of the Chinese banking industry in depth, establish the CSR concept of “Responsible Banks, Harmonious Development”, and intensify the industry’s awareness of social responsibility in an all-round manner. After a range of links including collection of participation materials, preliminary data appraisal and examination and review by experts, the appraisal committee scored the CSR performance of participators in the four aspects including management performance, economic performance, environmental performance and social performance, and finally selecting entities and individuals from 86 applying institutions winning the 2013 CSR awards of the CBA.