Case study: How Nykredit 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.

Stakeholder Identification and Engagement
As one of Denmark’s largest lenders, Nykredit bears certain responsibilities. Recognising its prominent role in society, Nykredit maintains ongoing dialogue with key stakeholders, including business and trade organizations, NGOs, public authorities, politicians, and major market participants. These conversations focus on critical topics such as climate and sustainability, regional development and growth across Denmark, lending to specific population groups, gender equality, diversity, and inclusion. Through active engagement with these groups, Nykredit ensures its initiatives align with societal expectations and support a sustainable future.

Internal Coordination at Nykredit
Nykredit continuously coordinates across its organization and management to stay informed about stakeholder perspectives and interests, and has established clear internal procedures for managing new or upcoming regulations, ensuring a well-defined distribution of responsibilities and timely involvement of various management levels. This is achieved through formal coordination forums within the organization and ongoing collaboration among relevant departments.

Such coordination enables Nykredit to adapt effectively to new political proposals, regulatory guidelines, authority recommendations, and requests from key partners.

For a comprehensive overview of Nykredit’s approach, organisational structure, and main stakeholders, please refer to its Sustainability Statement 2024.

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

In its 2024 Sustainability Fact Book Nykredit reports that it works with its clients and customers to encourage sustainable practices and enable sustainable economic activities as follows:

Approach and Key Actions
Nykredit, prioritizes ensuring that its advice, products, and services are responsible—benefiting both society at large and individual customers. To support this commitment, Nykredit has implemented various initiatives aimed at enhancing dialogue with its customers and motivating them to participate in the sustainable transition. Some specific examples include:

• Learning Programmes
  Given the constantly evolving landscape of sustainability, driven by new technologies and legislation, Nykredit emphasizes ongoing employee training in climate and sustainability skills. In 2022, Nykredit introduced basic sustainability e-learning modules for all employees and managers. In 2023, this programme was expanded to include Nykredit’s upgraded training 2.0, with a particular focus on greener owner-occupied homes and real estate. All new employees completed this basic training in 2024. Additionally, tailored training programmes have been developed for employees in specific roles, such as sustainable customer dialogues for all customer-facing staff in business banking and most customer-facing employees in personal banking during 2023 and 2024.

• Initiatives targeted at Personal Customers
  Through targeted conversations and attractive value propositions, Nykredit encourages homeowners to undertake energy efficiency improvements and switch heat sources. Supported by contributions from the Group’s majority shareholder, Forenet Kredit, both Nykredit Bank and Totalkredit have launched products and solutions to facilitate this transition. The bank has also introduced a special car loan designed to promote electric vehicle purchases over traditional cars.

• Climate Transition Plan for Business Customers
  In the corporate sector, Nykredit has intensified efforts to assist clients in understanding and enhancing their ESG profiles. Nykredit expects its largest business customers to measure their carbon footprint, set reduction targets, implement energy-saving initiatives, and pursue building energy labelling. These expectations are integrated into Nykredit’s dialogue with clients and form part of its credit assessment process. As of November 2024, credit evaluations include additional measurement points, emphasizing the customer’s carbon emissions, planned reduction actions, and climate targets, including validation through initiatives such as the Science Based Targets initiative or other recognized frameworks.

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.

FBRH Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB) Assurance:

First class PRB assurance services: The result of solid, hands-on ESG/ Sustainability experience

• • • FBRH is a GRI Certified Training Partner (Global), ISEP Training Centre and a member of CPD.
    • FBRH builds trust. Over 200 reviews from top professionals from around the world demonstrate our ability to build strong, trusting business relationships.
    • FBRH possesses a unique skill set that combines ESG/sustainability certified training, experience in advisory services and report preparation, and ESG/sustainability report assurance.

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 Nykredit, 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.nykredit.com/en-gb/samfundsansvar/reporting/

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