ABN AMRO

ABN AMRO demonstrates leading practices in various areas, particularly in impact materiality strategy-setting, sustainability governance, stewardship, disclosure of various environmental and financial data, human rights and lobbying. While the majority of the assessed entities in this iteration have not sufficiently defined an impact materiality strategy, ABN AMRO has been able to. Not only has it applied a rigorous process to identify and prioritise material sustainability impacts across its value chain, as well as disclosed the underlying basis and rationale for its identified and prioritized material impacts, but it has also set a sustainability strategy covering its material impacts. On governance, it assigns oversight and implementation responsibility to its highest governance body and specific functions in teams respectively, ensuring that the sustainability strategy is implemented, reviewed and updated. Additionally, it provides remuneration incentives to further the sustainability strategy by linking senior executive remuneration to sustainability targets.

With regards to stewardship, ABN AMRO has an overarching stewardship policy that supports environmental transitions and social best practices in line with its sustainability strategy, which details various forms of stewardship, including stakeholder engagement, advocacy and partnerships. It also transparently identifies key sectors, clients and investees to engage with on climate issues and nature-related impacts and participates in partnerships to influence and support sectors, clients and investees to act on their nature-related impacts. Aside from its stewardship activities, ABN AMRO also tracks its progress towards environmental data, monitoring not only its Scope 1 and 2 emissions, but also its financed emissions, all of which reduce in line with the interim targets it has set. It also transparently discloses its operation by country.

Human rights is another area where ABN AMRO also performs well in. Not only does ABN AMRO transparently detail its process for assessing its human rights risks and discloses what it considers to be its salient human rights issues, but it also engages with stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities. Additionally, it publicly discloses the results of its assessments of the products, services and capital it offers, which may be presented in an aggregated way. Furthermore, it has a publicly available policy statement expecting suppliers to respect the ILO core labour rights. ABN AMRO also discloses its lobbying expenditures and mentions that it requires third-party lobbyists to comply with its lobbying and political engagement policy.

While ABN AMRO demonstrates leading practices in various aspects, there is scope for improvement as well. For instance, while ABN AMRO discloses that it engages with clients on nature topics, it has an opportunity to influence their strategies for nature protection and restoration. Whereas it discloses scope 1-2 emissions, it could detail scope 2 emissions as market-based or location-based. It could also specify Scope 3 emissions coverage by category. With respect to financing, although ABN AMRO discloses current financing of high-emitting sectors, it could specify that it does not provide products, services, or capital to new fossil fuel projects or clients involved in such projects. It could also consider extending its time-bound strategy to phase out support for existing fossil fuel projects lacking a well-defined strategy aligned with a 1.5°C trajectory to all fossil fuels.

On human rights, ABN AMRO has an opportunity to reference all ILO fundamental rights at work in its publicly available policy statement that commits to respect workers’ rights. It could also disclose risk assessment processes related to ILO fundamental rights, along with mitigation strategies for identified risks. It could also disclose how it determines a living wage in its operational regions. Regarding lobbying, although it states in its annual report that it does not make political contributions, this commitment is not formalised in a public policy document. While a list of lobbying topics is disclosed, there is an opportunity to clarify how these align with its sustainability strategy.

Other recommendations include disclosing the breakdown of clients by income group, processes to avoid divestment from low-income countries.

This scorecard refers to information in English which was publicly available by July 15 2024. AuM and Total assets are stated in USD for comparability and have been calculated based on reported local currency values multiplied by applicable IMF currency converter values.