FMO’s Integrated Annual Report 2020 ranks 5th in the Transparency Benchmark, and 2nd out of 42 banks and insurance companies.
The Transparency Benchmark is a biennial study commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy and the Dutch professional organization of accountants (NBA). This study is held amongst 500 of the largest companies in the Netherlands and aims to measure their transparency in reporting on corporate social responsibility (CSR).
As indicated in the latest materiality assessment, being a responsible, transparent & accountable bank is important to our stakeholders. For FMO, the Transparency Benchmark provides an important gauge on how we are seen to perform in this area and how we compare to others in the industry. The ranking is seen as a means to an end, which is ultimately to ensure we create value and impact for our stakeholders by giving insight into how this is managed within FMO.
By taking on board the improvements raised in the last Transparency Benchmark as well as feedback from our key stakeholders, we moved up from the 14th to the 5th position on the ranking. This is a great achievement, especially considering the relatively small size of the team that has worked on this compared to other larger companies in the top 20.
The panel complemented FMO on the way it demonstrates how it creates value through real life case studies, providing a balanced picture of the opportunities and risks facing FMO and how dialogue with stakeholders influence FMO’s strategy and policies. By reporting on financed absolute GHG emissions, serious incidents as well as E&S management gaps in our portfolio further demonstrates that we are able and willing to present a balanced view of our positive and negative impacts. The areas of improvement mentioned were to include more transparency on the impacts in the supply chain, describing specific dilemmas FMO is facing and the lack of conciseness of the report.
Points for improvement will be used in FMO’s 2021 Annual Report
The reporting team has started the process to develop FMO’s 2021 Annual Report. The panel’s review will be considered, whereby specific attention will be paid to improving the level of conciseness of the report. This has suffered in the past two years due to meeting growing stakeholder expectations to increase transparency on topics such as ESG, Human Rights, etc. Achieving conciseness continues to be challenging as our stakeholders have come to expect a certain level of transparency and as we face increasing regulatory reporting requirements (e.g. the EU Sustainable Finance regulation).
