Case study: How Globalance promotes a culture of responsible banking among its employees

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.

Globalance has established itself as a prominent showcase in Switzerland and beyond, becoming an important point of reference and expertise for the media. The list of awards is regarded as an indicator of this recognition.

Shareholder engagement with companies, fund managers, and projects is a crucial mechanism to amplify its impact.

Globalance participates actively in engagement pools, investor coalitions, and collaborates with investment partners such as fund managers. Examples include:

• CSP – Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth (University of Zurich)
• Access to Nutrition Foundation
• CDP
• Swiss Sustainable Finance Association (SSF)
• Nature Action 100
• Climate Action 100

The organization maintains a policy of engaging with students, academics, and scientific coalitions to promote its vision and contribute to education and research.

Locally, Globalance also carefully selects suppliers who align with its sustainability commitments.

How does Globalance promote a culture of responsible banking among its employees?

In its 2024 PRB Responsible Banking Progress Statement Globalance reports that it took the following actions to promote a culture of responsible banking among its employees:

Globalance’s founders are actively involved on a daily basis, nurturing and reinforcing a mission-driven culture every day.

As a value-led and purpose-driven pure-play company, Globalance begins by selecting employees who are aligned with its core values.

The foundation of Globalance’s culture is the absence of short-term financial incentives. Instead, Globalance implements a long-term employee ownership program—every employee owns shares in the company through allocated employee shares, rather than cash payments. This approach helps align long-term perspectives and fosters team commitment. There are no sales targets.

The sustainable impact-culture is most effectively cultivated through investment decisions, each serving as proof of Globalance’s mission and professional standards.

Additionally, Globalance emphasizes the importance of ongoing development. An internal Globalance Academy has been established, providing every employee with opportunities for continuous learning and training.

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.

FBRH Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB) Assurance:

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The combination of all the above empowers FBRH to provide first class Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB) assurance services.

References:

This case study is based on published information by Globalance, 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.globalance.com/wp-content/uploads/responsible-banking-progress-statement_2024.pdf

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