Message from the Executive Director

It gives me immense pleasure to present the fifth annual Environmental, Social and Governance Report of the Bank and share our ongoing commitments and achievements in the journey towards building a sustainable organisation. The key tenets of ‘Fair to Customer, Fair to Bank’ and ‘One Bank, One Team’, with the right balance of risk and compliance principles are helping deliver on our strategy of responsible growth.

In fiscal 2024, we continued our efforts towards reducing the Bank’s emissions from our own operations through mechanisms to adopt more green power. Our water and waste management initiatives are focussed on embracing circularity and reducing the impact on the environment. The steady progress towards integrating sustainable practices in the Bank’s operations gives us the confidence to set ourselves the goal of becoming carbon neutral in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by fiscal 2032. We are consistently enhancing processes and data architecture to sharpen our capability to better manage and report about our environmental footprint and other ESG metrics. We have expanded the evaluation of our Scope 3 emissions and will be increasing collaboration with our value chain partners to encourage adoption of responsible and sustainable practices.

One of our priorities is to continue to support our clients and capture opportunities as the country transitions to a lowcarbon economy. We are building capability and engaging with clients in this area and facilitating sustainable finance. The impact of climate change is becoming increasingly evident and poses risks to the financial sector. The Bank is evaluating such risks as we constantly keep oversight of the evolving developments while protecting the Bank’s risk calibrated revenues.

Protection and restoration of biodiversity is an area of significant focus as part of our corporate social responsibility initiatives. Creating sustainable forests is an ongoing project undertaken in over 50 forest reserves across the country. Water harvesting and creating carbon sinks through tree plantation are other major areas that are being pursued at scale. We remain committed to these efforts as we endeavour to help communities to revive local biodiversity that can improve the availability of food and water.

As part of our focus on Social parameters, the Bank believes in being transparent in our engagement with employees, customers and the society at large. The principle of equal opportunity to all are core to the success of our organisation. We have taken several measures on employee health and well-being programmes aimed at fostering a positive work environment. Operational efficiency by ensuring simplification of processes and convenience, along with creating awareness about cyber risks and data privacy are driving our engagement with customers.

In this journey, strong governance is at the core of all our efforts. Our endeavour is to be transparent and remain accountable to our stakeholders. The dedicated focus provided through the ESG Steering Committee and periodic updates to the Board, ensures initiatives related to ESG are undertaken across the organisation. This is further reinforced by the ethos of ‘Being Responsible, Being Sustainable’.

As highlighted in this report, the Bank supports the achievement of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Our ongoing commitment to a sustainable future and shared value for all is reflected in the efforts to extend help to the underserved communities and making a meaningful impact in their lives.

The ESG Report and the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report for fiscal 2024 provide details about the progress made and our ongoing efforts in this journey. I and my leadership team look forward to your continued support to be good stewards for the Bank.

With best wishes,