Case study: How Helaba 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.

Regular stakeholder engagement is a key part of Helaba’s materiality assessment process. To effectively identify stakeholders, Helaba employs a systematic approach, evaluating both their impact on its activities and its impact on them. The feedback and insights Helaba obtains from this engagement are crucial to its action planning process, ensuring that the sustainability initiatives align with stakeholder expectations and industry best practices. Furthermore, the bank’s Code of Conduct ensures responsible interaction with all stakeholders.

Helaba prioritises active engagement with customers to understand their needs and expectations, especially regarding sustainable finance and ESG-related products. As an active promoter of a sustainable transition, Helaba’s Capital Markets Conference enabled the bank to explore sustainable capital market financing solutions and the application of digital innovation in the financial sector with its clients.

Additionally, Helaba is in continuous communication with regulators and policymakers to stay informed about evolving sustainability regulations and ensure adherence to these standards. Partnering with nongovernmental organisations provides the bank with key insights into societal expectations and emerging sustainability trends. Helaba’s active participation in several industry associations enables the bank to contribute to the development of best practices and industry standards through collaborative efforts.

Moreover, Helaba provides regular updates on its business performance to the Supervisory Board, which holds the highest-ranking control function within the organisation. The Supervisory Board includes representatives from employee groups, political entities and the business sector, ensuring comprehensive oversight of Helaba’s operations.

Helaba also actively engages with its own employees regarding sustainability, focusing on topics such as circularity, biodiversity, and climate change. Through a comprehensive training programme, Helaba enables its employees to properly assess sustainability-related opportunities and risks. This in-depth knowledge also helps the bank’s front-office units to work more closely with customers.

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

In its 2025 PRB Reporting and Self-Assessment Template Helaba reports that it took the following actions to promote a culture of responsible banking among its employees:

Helaba considers its employees to be essential in promoting responsible operations, reflecting the bank’s commitment to sustainability and supporting customers in their ongoing journey toward greater sustainability. Dedicated to continuous training and professional growth, Helaba makes significant investments in developing its workforce.

In the 2021 financial year, Helaba launched tailored training programs to give employees a foundational understanding of sustainability within the bank’s business context. By 2023, these programs had been expanded to include additional advanced modules on specialized topics. The courses provide a thorough overview of key sustainability and sustainable finance concepts, including climate change, biodiversity, circular economy, and ESG reporting. As of December 31, 2023, 3,253 Helaba employees had completed the online training, and approximately 140 individuals, primarily from front-office units, participated in the more intensive ESG master classes.

Helaba has also launched an online training module dedicated to information security and data protection, which all employees are required to complete annually. This training offers insights into cyber threats, data protection principles, and procedures for handling data subject requests and data breaches, ensuring employees recognize the significance of these issues. Regular education on information security and data protection fosters responsible behaviour in daily business activities, highlighting its vital role in responsible banking.

Furthermore, Helaba has adopted a corporate citizenship strategy that promotes community engagement across the bank and its subsidiaries, including social volunteering initiatives. The bank actively encourages employees to participate in environmental and social projects by providing up to two days off per year for volunteering. Helaba seeks to expand its social volunteering efforts within the Group, and aimed for at least 1,000 volunteer days annually by 2025, in partnership with its employees.

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 Helaba, 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.helaba.com/media/docs/int/sustainability/prb-reporting-and-self-assessment_helaba2025.pdf

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