ABN AMRO has positive impact on health: it is no longer accepting clients from the tobacco industry
ABN AMRO, the third-largest bank in the Netherlands, with more than six million customers worldwide, announced that it will stop investing in the tobacco industry, because “the core activity of this industry is not compatible with the bank’s core values”.
ABN AMRO partnered with the Dutch Heart Foundation, Hartstichting, to fight against smoking Tweet This!, which kills approximately 20,000 people every year in the Netherlands. According to the partnership agreement between the bank and Hartstichting:
- Hartstichting’s payments will be run through ABN AMRO, and the bank’s payment app will be used to attract donations to Hartstichting
- Hartstichting and ABN AMRO will seek to jointly issue a Health Impact Bond
- the bank’s staff may, through the ABN AMRO Foundation, participate in programmes intended to raise funds for Hartstichting
- ABN AMRO will no longer extend credit to tobacco producers
“We are happy to partner with the Hartstichting. We share their ambition to reduce the number of deaths and seriously ill resulting from smoking. We are doing this based on our conviction that everyone is entitled to a healthy life,” said Kees van Dijkhuizen, ABN AMRO CEO, adding that “ABN AMRO wants to be a bank with a healthy impact on society, which is why we are supporting Hartstichting in its fight against smoking. We hope other institutions will follow our example soon”.
References:
This article was compiled using a press release by ABN AMRO. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses but made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the press release’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the links below: