Case study: How Caja de Ingenieros 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.

Caja de Ingenieros recognizes that engaging various stakeholders in the Bank’s operational strategies is a vital component of socially responsible management. Given the nature of its business, Caja de Ingenieros operates in a dynamic and comprehensive manner within society and its surroundings. With this understanding, the Bank aims to establish robust trust-based relationships with the diverse stakeholders it interacts with throughout its financial and social endeavours, fostering shared value through open and participative dialogue.

In 2022, Caja de Ingenieros updated its materiality analysis and broadened the ESG (environment, social, and governance) impact assessment conducted in 2021 to incorporate a new financial perspective.

This update allows for the identification of the most critical aspects for the Bank’s stakeholders, as well as those that significantly affect the Group’s business, including potential impacts on its yield, positioning, and value.

Moreover, Caja de Ingenieros remains actively engaged with leading organizations, initiatives, and inter-sectoral committees—both nationally and internationally—that advocate for sustainable finance, including national programmes that promote financial education for young people. For further information, please refer to the Annual Report.

As a credit cooperative, Caja de Ingenieros’s members serve both as members and customers, participating in the Annual General Meeting and special meetings. The development of the strategic plan has also included employee groups to ensure a strong institutional framework and a corporate culture plan within the strategy.

How did Caja de Ingenieros work with its clients and customers to encourage sustainable practices and enable sustainable economic activities?

In its 2023 PRB Reporting and Self-Assessment Template Caja de Ingenieros reports that it works with its clients and customers to encourage sustainable practices and enable sustainable economic activities as follows:

In terms of its investment and insurance product portfolio, Caja de Ingenieros is actively working to expand it. By the end of 2022, 85% of the investment and pension funds managed by Group subsidiaries incorporated sustainability criteria, reinforced by a message to Caja de Ingenieros’s members emphasizing its commitment to sustainable finance.

Since 2021, Caja de Ingenieros’s investment advice questionnaires have included questions to better understand customers’ sustainability preferences.

Caja de Ingenieros has also continued to promote the use of its online tool that assesses the socio-environmental impact of Caja de Ingenieros’s investment funds. This tool acts as an environmental calculator, utilizing six indicators to evaluate environmental, social, and governance impacts.

Regarding financing, Caja de Ingenieros has decided that companies in emissions-intensive sectors (such as energy, automotive, steel, cement, and transport) applying for loans exceeding 500,000 euros will need to provide information on their energy transition plans or, according to the proportionality criterion, on their energy transition strategies and initiatives (including Scope 3 upstream environmental management).

Finally, for another consecutive year, 75% of Caja de Ingenieros’s financial advisors have completed training in sustainable financial advice.

Additionally, Caja de Ingenieros anticipates launching a financial education content platform aimed at enhancing its members’ financial health by providing knowledge to assist in their financial decision-making processes.

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 Caja de Ingenieros, 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.caixaenginyers.com/documents/1109332/664871422/CI+PRB-Reporting-and-Self-Assessment-2023_EN.pdf/77b9f6e1-f29e-d04f-19a9-6fefd9989875?t=1696335742239

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