Sustainable development is no longer just a declaration

Sustainable development is no longer just a declaration. Because of the new regulations, it becomes a set of activities, the effects of which businesses must disclose in an annual report publicly published on their website. This results from the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), published on December 16, 2022, in the Official Journal of the EU, and member countries should implement it into national law within 18 months.

Technically, ESG certification is a 3rd party verification system used to measure a company’s key sustainability initiatives. 

On that matter, for a second year already, we partnered with CRIF Poland, which provided their Synesgy platform to proceed with our second ESG certificate. The Synesgy score model developed by CRIF Ratings – the authorized credit rating agency – allows an easy visualization of the score obtained in the 3 macro sections of the questionnaire (Environment, Social, Governance).

ESG certification (scoring) determines the company’s level of compliance with environmental, social, and corporate governance factors, also taking into account the sector and geographical area.

For SME customers, the questionnaire was very much simplified, and it takes around 15 min to proceed with all the answers.

To proceed with ESG certification, please go to: https://www.synesgy.com/

For the SME customers this process should be simplified and automated as much as possoble, as SMEs don’t have and won’t have much internal resourses to proceed with ESG.

What is the role of the banks in that area? What banks can help their SME customers in preparing for ESG reporting and implementing ESG strategies?

Here are two examples from the CEE region:

ING Bank in Poland

Launched a website – ESG in Your Company – with a blog, practical recommendations, and ESG Academy for companies – a series of webinars explaining how to proceed with ESG in the company. 

Česká spořitelna in the Czech Republic offers a sustainability advisory and consultancy to entrepreneurs and companies. Tha bank has two hundred thousand companies in its portfolio. To 120 thousand of them the bank expects to help in the coming years in the field of sustainability and ESG. Bank offers digital and in-person approach with complex advisory in ESG area, building and implementation of ESG strategies, energy management, financing options and green subsidies and ESG digital tools (Photovoltaics calculator, Electromobility etc.).