Impact Institute joins leading financial consortium to propose new social, environmental impact measurement and reporting rules for banks
Banks have a pivotal role to play in addressing the dauting challenges faced by society. They have a mandate to assess and manage related risks and, given their influence, are in a prime position to act as stewards in the transition to the impact economy.
What they require is the tools to help them on the journey.
Financial firms need new reporting rules that pull positive and negative externalities like job creation and pollution into standard practices to provide a well-rounded picture of how they create true value. The need better information, which considers a wider range of capitals and stakeholders in order to make better, impact-driven, decision. Finally they need to be able to understand their sustainability related risks to equip them to meet their mandate of safeguarding capital.
To that end, Banking for Impact (BFI) aims to create new a common impact measurement and valuation approach which fuels sustainable economic decision making and transparent reporting.
Today, BFI published a Vision Paper, outlining plans to build an IMV approach that includes the quantification, valuation, attribution and aggregation of impacts for the financial sector. Such scalable standards do not yet exist for financial firms.
BFI is a new alliance including Dutch bank ABN AMRO, Denmark’s Danske Bank, Singapore’s DBS Bank, Switzerland-based UBS Group plus Harvard Business School’s IWAI, and the Impact Institute, a social enterprise pioneering new standards in integrated reporting.
BFI calls for all leaders in finance, academia and the non-profit sector to join them in their efforts to work towards a broader definition of responsibility, a more inclusive understanding of value and ultimately the creation of an impact economy.
Download the media release here.
