Case study: How Garanti BBVA identifies and works on strategic business opportunities to increase positive and reduce negative impacts

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.

Garanti BBVA incorporates the concerns of its stakeholders—customers, employees, shareholders, investors, suppliers, regulators, auditors, and society at large—on social and environmental issues, diversity, fiscal responsibility, human rights, and the prevention of corruption and other illegal activities into its business strategies, operations, and activities. The bank maintains ongoing dialogue with its external and internal stakeholders through various channels, and key issues are prioritized based on the feedback and insights gathered from these engagements.

The bank has consistently been actively involved in numerous initiatives, working closely with all stakeholders. These initiatives focus on the following priority areas:

• Global Frameworks: Garanti BBVA and the BBVA Group are among the banks involved in establishing, promoting, and supporting the UNEP-FI Responsible Banking Principles. In 2023, Garanti BBVA also joined the main group responsible for shaping the 2030 strategy of the UNEP FI Responsible Banking Principles.
• Climate Commitments: Garanti BBVA is a member of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance supported by UNEP-FI, aligning its operations with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.
• Market Standards: The bank supports key standards such as the Equator Principles, ICMA’s Green Bond Principles, Social Bond Principles, LMA’s Green Credit Principles, and the EU Taxonomy, among others, developed by the banking sector.
• Transparency: Garanti BBVA publishes an integrated activity report aligned with the Turkish Sustainability Reporting Standards and includes a GRI Standards index.
• Regulatory Engagement: The bank actively participates in consultative and advisory processes with regulatory and supervisory bodies, including the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change and the Banks Association of Turkey, to support the development of sustainable finance regulations.

For over a decade, Garanti BBVA has actively engaged in various transnational initiatives. Besides its commitment to the United Nations Global Compact and its status as a signatory of the UNEP FI, the bank has been involved in numerous sustainability-focused initiatives since 2012. It is a member of several working groups, including the United Nations Net-Zero Banking Association (NZBA), the United Nations Responsible Banking Principles Working Group, the Global Compact Turkey Group, SKD Turkey (Business World and Sustainable Development Association), the Banks Association of Turkey (TBB), the Role of the Financial Sector in Sustainable Growth Working Group, and the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSİAD) Environment and Climate Change Working Group. Throughout these efforts, Garanti BBVA maintains close cooperation with all key stakeholders—including industry players, regulators and supervisors, investors, and civil society organizations.

How did Garanti BBVA identify and work on strategic business opportunities to increase positive and reduce negative impacts?

In its 2024 PRB Impact Report Garanti BBVA reports that it identified and worked on strategic business opportunities to increase positive and reduce negative impacts as follows:

In 2024, one of Garanti BBVA’s key strategic priorities was the development of sustainable solutions, driven by the following growth levers:

• Formulating sector-specific strategies for clients, with a focus on promoting the adoption of low-carbon technologies across energy-intensive industries, utilizing the bank’s advisory expertise in relevant areas.
• Expanding the business by creating targeted products that address specific issues and incorporate more ESG criteria, such as inclusive growth through infrastructure projects and sustainability-linked loans.
• Setting ambitious targets to accelerate business growth by leveraging digital capabilities, offering innovative and disruptive value propositions in selected verticals.
• Financing emerging sustainable technologies by revising existing sustainable finance standards to include innovations like hydrogen batteries, carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies.
• Enhancing risk management capabilities and implementing automated reporting processes to adopt data-driven analytics in the sustainability arena.

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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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 Garanti BBVA, 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.garantibbvainvestorrelations.com/en/images/pdf/GBFR24_ENG_App6.pdf

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