Petra Sandner

In your opinion, what’s the key to successfully develop the sustainable finance movement?

Sander: All relevant stakeholders are gaining an increased understanding that sustainability is not a temporary trend. Rather, it is here to stay and it will soon become an integral part of our financial system. One key element of a successful transformation is to engage, to enable and to enthuse our employees. The dialogue between clients and banks will become more transparent and more detailed. Clients will expect from their financiers a comprehensive and competent support on their transition towards sustainability. This includes the right ESG product offerings, knowledgeable sustainable finance advisory services, and a profound understanding of the client’s sector-specific transformation path as well as the client’s resulting needs and requirements. In order to be able to meet all these expectations, it is essential to invest in knowledge as well as in the development of a proper sustainability database. This is where sustainability meets digitalization – a combination, which offers tremendous opportunities.

What role does Helaba play here?

Sander: Sustainability is not entirely new to Helaba. Being an institution governed by public law, sustainability is naturally embedded into our DNA. We understand and implement sustainability within, as well as outside of our organization. Thus, we want to improve the sustainability performance of our own operations, we want to engage ourselves to meet our responsibility for the society as a whole and, last but not least, we want to support our clients on their transition path.

In order to achieve this, we have set ourselves ambitious goals, which will be underpinned by a corresponding KPI measurement and control system. Besides the reduction of our own emissions, we focus on the expansion of our sustainable financing activities. Here, we build upon our well-established and long-term client relationships as well as our product expertise i.e. in the area of sustainable project finance.

What is your personal goal?

Sander: As Chief Sustainability Officer, it is my responsibility to further promote and navigate the sustainability transformation of Helaba and its subsidiaries. This includes the ongoing development of our sustainability strategy on the one hand as well as the ingraining of sustainability into our organizational culture on the other hand. Already today, the way we conduct our business is led by a broad set of values that also contains important sustainability features. This serves as a good basis for our further transformation. Our aim is to simply be a good and sustainable bank for our clients.