All The Reasons Zenith Bank Is Rated As The "Best Company In Sustainability Reporting" In Africa
Zenith
Bank has been named ‘Best Company in Sustainability Reporting In
Africa,” at the 2017 Sustainability Enterprise Responsibility Awards
(SERAS) CSR Awards held at the weekend.
Zenith
Bank has blazed a trail, with its 2016 Sustainability Report titled
“Creating Wealth Sustainably” being the first Sustainability report in
Nigeria, and indeed, the first from Africa’s financial services sector
to have adopted the new GRI Standards.
With
its 2016 Sustainability Report, Zenith Bank has, true to its pedigree,
raised the bar in Sustainability Reporting within and outside the
financial services sector, while setting the pace in the adoption of
global best standards in reporting. The report has been widely
acknowledged in the global Sustainability arena, with the GRI featuring
it on the homepage of its official website: https://www.globalreporting.org/, out of the over 44,000 reports by over 11,000 organizations that are hosted on that database.
The
bank has not only supported the global climate action and has
prioritized investment in green and sustainable business projects but
has fully integrated environmental and social considerations into its
business and credit administration processes.
As
part of its green earth policy, Zenith Bank is the first Bank in
Nigeria to have carried out an external audit on its greenhouse gas
footprints, using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standards, a
globally certified GHG audit procedure.
The
new Standards is designed to replace the older GRI G4 reporting
guidelines, which was the reporting standard Zenith Bank adopted in its
2015 Sustainability report. The GRI Standards was unveiled in October
2016 by the Global Sustainability Standards Board (GSSB).
Though
the timeframe set by the GSSB for institutions to comply with the new
Standards is July 2018, Zenith Bank, however, emerged as one of the
first institutions in the world to have mastered and adopted the new
Standards one year ahead of schedule.
As
shown in the reporting database of the Global Reporting Initiative
(GRI), over 100 companies have so far adopted the new GRI Standards
worldwide, including major brands such as Accenture, Bank Audi, Citi
Bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, European Investment Bank, Ford
Motor Company, ING Group, Johnson & Johnson, Royal Bank of Canada,
Singapore Airlines Limited, The Coca-Cola Company, Target, UPS, and so
on. Zenith Bank is one of these global early birds.
Sustainability
reporting provides a great tool for measuring progress in the adoption
of Sustainable business principles. These principles require
organizations to adopt responsible environmental and social policies and
practices, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the
Nigerian Sustainable Banking Principles, the IFC Performance Standards,
the UNGC Sustainability principles, among others.
As
a responsible corporate citizen, Zenith Bank takes seriously, its
environmental and social responsibilities in all the communities where
it operates. And reporting progress in the adoption of these best
practices to stakeholders, is also a major corporate responsibility.
Sustainability
reporting compels transparency, accountability and good corporate
governance. It is also a major self-assessment tool that enables
reporting institutions to see the gaps in their sustainability
implementation with a view to closing them. This is why reporting has
become a key performance indicator, especially among leading global
brands.
Comments
Post a Comment