In today’s financial landscape, sustainable finance extends beyond environmental considerations. A leading European banking group recognized that while their relationship managers had robust tools for assessing environmental impacts across 15 key sectors, they lacked equivalent resources for evaluating social dimensions. This gap hindered comprehensive sustainability discussions with clients and prevented holistic ESG risk assessment.
CLIENT CHALLENGE
The bank’s existing sector sheets focused exclusively on environmental factors, with detailed analysis of value chain impacts and mitigation strategies for sectors including Automotive, Agri-Food, Transport, and Textiles. However, the increasing importance of social factors in regulatory frameworks like CSRD demanded a more comprehensive approach. The bank needed to:
- Integrate critical social issues into their existing sector assessment sheets
- Develop both cross-sector and industry-specific social impact frameworks
- Create user-friendly, visually compelling materials for relationship managers
- Ensure consistent formatting and messaging across all resources
results & impacts
Working with the sustainability specialists at Ksapa, the bank successfully:
- Developed a comprehensive “generic” social issues framework applicable across sectors, aligned with CSRD requirements
- Created tailored sector-specific social impact assessments for priority industries
- Enhanced existing sector sheets with detailed social considerations:
- For Transport & Logistics: Distinguished between logistics platforms and urban/peri-urban delivery impacts
- For Chemicals: Added accessibility of pricing, R&D cost transparency, clinical testing impacts, and sourcing from conflict zones
- For Hospitality: Restructured value chain analysis to separately assess procurement, guest stay, and transportation impacts
This new social assessment resource has transformed our conversations with clients. We are now equipped to approach sustainability in a holistic way, helping clients identify risks and opportunities they hadn’t considered before. It has strengthened our position as true strategic partners.
Chenda Bottichio, Sustainable Finance Manager
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