Case study: How Danske Bank 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.

Danske Bank engages with a diverse array of stakeholders to understand their expectations and identify areas for improvement. Danske Bank’s engagement with stakeholders is guided by the principles outlined in its Stakeholder Policy. These principles include collaborating to achieve shared goals for the benefit of Danske Bank’s customers and society, always seeking to engage in an open and constructive dialogue and making Danske Bank’s knowledge and expertise available to its stakeholders.

The insights gained from these engagements inform Danske Bank’s annual materiality assessment, which identifies sustainability issues that pose risks or opportunities for both society and Danske Bank’s business.

How did Danske Bank work with its clients and customers to encourage sustainable practices and enable sustainable economic activities?

In its 2023 self-assessment for implementation of the Principles for Responsible Banking Danske Bank reports that it works with its clients and customers to encourage sustainable practices and enable sustainable economic activities as follows:

To meet its climate targets, Danske Bank works closely with its customers, offering financial advice and solutions. The transition to a low-carbon economy necessitates significant new investments in low-carbon production facilities, infrastructure, and transportation, as well as energy-efficiency improvements. It also requires limiting investments in technologies that perpetuate high-carbon economies. These critical investment decisions are made by companies, private individuals, and the public sector— Danske Bank’s customers. Danske Bank can influence these decisions by managing access to capital, adjusting the cost of capital, and providing sound financial advice. As part of its commitment to protecting nature and biodiversity, Danske Bank has identified high-risk sectors in its lending and investment portfolios and set engagement targets for customers and investees in those sectors.

Danske Bank employs active ownership to protect the value of its customers’ investments, generate attractive returns, and manage the societal impacts of its investments.

Danske Bank’s Sustainable Finance Policy and Credit Policy guide its investment and lending processes, along with its seven position statements. In 2020, Danske Bank set volume targets for its sustainable financing products, services, and investments, and reports on target progress in the sustainability statement of the Annual Report 2023.

• By 2023, DKK 300 billion in sustainable financing, including granted green loans and arranged sustainable bonds.
• By 2030, DKK 150 billion invested in funds with sustainability objectives (Article 9 funds in SFDR).
• By 2023, DKK 50 billion invested in the green transition by Danica Pension, with a target of DKK 100 billion by 2030.

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 Danske Bank, 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://danskebank.com/-/media/danske-bank-com/file-cloud/2024/2/danske-bank-prb-self-assessment-2023.pdf?rev=158b9c3a59474e4eb53775780bd9b737

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