Case study: How Coventry Building Society works with its clients and customers to encourage sustainable practices

Stakeholder identification and consultation

Please describe which stakeholders (or groups/ types of stakeholders) you have identified, consulted, engaged, collaborated or partnered with for the purpose of implementing the Principles and improving your bank’s impacts. This should include a high-level overview of how your bank has identified relevant stakeholders, what issues were addressed/results achieved and how they fed into the action planning process.

Coventry Building Society’s Stakeholders

Coventry Building Society’s sustainability-related initiatives are grounded in understanding and addressing the perspectives of its stakeholders. In 2019, Coventry Building Society’s Board conducted a formal review to identify its stakeholders, which include members/customers, colleagues, investors, suppliers, community groups, and the environment. This identification process followed an examination of Coventry Building Society’s activities and the groups materially affected by them. Coventry Building Society has established various formal and informal channels to gauge stakeholder opinions. This engagement ensures that the views of stakeholders are communicated to relevant functions within Coventry Building Society, aiding in decision-making processes as well as informing the Board.

Stakeholder Engagement Activity

Coventry Building Society engages regularly with its stakeholders through numerous channels, such as its annual general meeting, direct discussions with members regarding key issues via the Members panel, supplier relationship management meetings, internal research, and external benchmarking. This includes gathering employee feedback through the employee opinion survey, the Great Place to Work Trust Index. Additionally, Coventry Building Society’s Treasury Function routinely engages with its principal wholesale investors and rating agencies. Jo Kenrick, the Deputy Chair, is specifically responsible for understanding colleagues’ perspectives and ensuring their representation on the Board. One of Coventry Building Society’s Non-Executive Directors, Brendan O’Connor, has been appointed to provide insights from a members’ perspective at the Board. The Community Team also engages with community groups and partners through facilitated discussions to understand what matters most to them.

Stakeholder engagement becomes particularly significant as Coventry Building Society addresses its environmental impact. The organization is committed to working with suppliers to reduce emissions linked to the products and services it procures. Recognizing that this is the society’s second-largest source of emissions, it aims to assist suppliers in decarbonizing by 5% to 25% between 2021 and 2030.

While Coventry Building Society is focused on the positive steps it can take to facilitate a just transition to Net Zero, it acknowledges that the climate challenges associated with the UK’s housing stock cannot be resolved in isolation. Successful achievement of this objective will require collaboration from stakeholders in government, the utilities sector, and house builders. In 2022, Coventry Building Society engaged with the industry on this topic and intended to continue contributing to collaborative efforts in 2023 and beyond. The current geopolitical climate, its effects on energy prices, and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis underscore the necessity for continual improvements in the efficiency of UK housing.

Regular engagement with stakeholders enables Coventry Building Society to pinpoint the sustainability issues that are most pertinent to them, ensuring that its sustainability strategy reflects these areas of impact and informs broader decision-making. This process is facilitated by annual materiality assessments.

How did Coventry Building Society work with its clients and customers to encourage sustainable practices and enable sustainable economic activities?

In its 2023 PRB Report Coventry Building Society reports that it works with its clients and customers to encourage sustainable practices and enable sustainable economic activities as follows:

In 2023, Coventry Building Society reviewed its entire product suite and member journey in accordance with the Consumer Duty Rules, and continued training its branch network to effectively support vulnerable members. The organization is committed to ensuring that its policies and procedures promote ethical marketing, protect member data, safeguard cybersecurity, support financial health, and maintain accessibility for all members.

Coventry Building Society actively engages with members to enhance access to sustainable lending. In September 2021, it launched the Green Together Reward, a £500 cashback incentive aimed at encouraging improvements in home energy efficiency. Evidence from Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) demonstrates that some members have significantly improved their energy efficiency as a result of this initiative. For instance, one member’s property, which had a “D” EPC rating before the application, achieved a “B” rating following the completion of the recommended work. This program has now evolved into Coventry Building Society’s Green Additional Borrowing scheme, which offers discounted borrowing for qualifying green home improvements.

Coventry Building Society’s Customer Carbon Calculator and Sustainable Hub, accessible on its website (Sustainable living (coventrybuildingsociety.co.uk)), provides an educational carbon calculator designed to assist all members in understanding the types of energy efficiency enhancements they could make to their properties. Members answer a series of questions about their home, and receive a personalized report that includes:

• EPC rating (or a modelled rating if no EPC exists)
• Potential EPC rating
• Estimated CO2 emissions
• Recommended efficiency improvements, including costs, savings for each measure, and star rating on work involved, comfort and practicality
• Total savings in terms of emissions and energy costs.

UN Principles for Responsible Banking: Accelerating a positive global transition for people and the planet

With over 300 signatory banks representing almost half of the global banking industry, the Principles for Responsible Banking are the world’s foremost sustainable banking framework. Through these Principles, the banking community takes action to align core strategies, decision-making, lending and investment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and international agreements such as the Paris Climate Agreement.

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References:

This case study is based on published information by Coventry Building Society, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the following link:

https://www.coventrybuildingsociety.co.uk/content/dam/cbs/member/pdfs/esg/sustainability/principles-for-responsible-banking-report-2023.pdf

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