The UN Environmental Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) launched the Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB) in 2019. Five years on from their launch, the world has changed greatly.
New international agreements have been ratified, such as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, defining new goals and expectations for the banking sector. Science has furthered understanding of tipping points and consequences of trajectories, for example guiding climate mitigation efforts towards a necessary 1.5 degrees pathway. Regulatory environments have caught up in many regions and turned good market practices that emerged under the PRB framework and community into regulatory requirements.
Now is the moment to evolve the PRB framework to guide banks on strong delivery against these new realities and contexts, focusing across four priority areas – climate, nature, healthy & inclusive economies and human rights.
The Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB) framework is built on six key Principles designed to define purpose, vision and ambition to shape responsible banking. Signatory banks commit to embedding these six Principles across all business areas, at the strategic, portfolio and transactional levels.
With respect to sustainability transparency and public disclosure, PRB Principle 6 more specifically guides leading responsible banks in this way: We will periodically review our individual and collective implementation of these Principles and be transparent about and accountable for our positive and negative impacts and our contribution to society’s goals.
UNEP FI’s latest publication, Guidance for Transparency sets out how signatories can be transparent regarding their bank’s implementation journey and should inspire banks when they look to establish public sustainability disclosures, which supports Principle 6.
The aim is for Signatories to disclose all or most of their responsible banking progress within their existing sustainability reporting, relying on appropriate mandatory or voluntary disclosure frameworks. Signatory banks shall also annually disclose their progress using the Responsible Banking Progress Statement. Download the report here.
Responsible Banking Progress Statement
In the five years since the launch of the Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB), it’s clear the sustainability transparency and disclosure landscape has matured and evolved.
The UN Environmental Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) has fully embraced these developments. That’s why we have introduced a replacement for the current PRB Reporting and Self–Assessment Template.
UNEP FI’s new Progress Statement not only takes on a revised format – as an executive summary which consolidates a bank’s reporting into a readily digested short-form document – it also represents a renewed emphasis on demonstrating to both internal and external stakeholders, through crisp, concise narrative, how sustainability is a key aspect of the bank’s strategy and a driver of competitive advantage.
By embracing – with the new Progress Statement – the current realities of an enhanced sustainability reporting landscape, we encourage PRB banks to re-allocate resources away from duplicative reporting activities. Instead, we recommend they focus on strategic monitoring, assessment and communication of progress, knowing that they can do so without overall loss of transparency and accountability.
For more information, please download the publication here.