Being purpose-led means we strive to create value by balancing the different needs of our stakeholders. And as the leading bank in the UK for business customers, and one of the largest for retail customers, we know the impacts of our business are wide-ranging.
In 2021, our ESG materiality assessment involved a programme of stakeholder engagement to deepen our understanding of the ESG issues that matter most to them. The findings guide our reporting and decision making, ensuring we remain focused on the right issues.
While we have identified climate, enterprise and learning as the three focus areas of our purpose where we can make a meaningful contribution, our 2021 assessment confirmed that broader ESG topics and those related to our core business responsibilities, as illustrated opposite, are also important for many of our stakeholders.
As a responsible business, some topics like financial crime, operational resilience, and responsible governance – as well as diversity, equity and inclusion – are topics we already focus on and will continue to strengthen further. On the other hand, topics such as biodiversity and human rights are less progressed and will require further work in 2022 and beyond.
In delivering our purpose-led strategy, we expect the measures we report on to adapt and expand over time as we seek to improve our understanding of our environmental and social impact – as well as our stakeholders’ changing expectations on how we address these topics.