Embedding sustainability into the commercial business

For Better Business

In the last quarter of 2012, ING took an important step to embed sustainability into the commercial business with the start of the Sustainable Lending team (SLT). The newly created team has a global mandate for all Lending Services business lines and will seek and define business opportunities with sustainable clients and sectors. It has taken up the challenge to facilitate a lending portfolio shift towards sustainability.

Following the successful execution of a 100 days High Impact Project on Sustainability in 2011, the Lending Services Management Team (LSMT) decided to set up a Sustainable Lending Team to implement recommendations made by the project teams. The SLT will facilitate an increase in the volume of sustainable deals and total revenues generated from sustainable clients. Because sustainable clients are considered to be forward looking, aware of and proactively addressing resource constraints and other sustainability challenges, they tend to have outstanding financial and risk profiles. The identification of these clients will be done with the use of an internally developed score card.

At deal level, the SLT will promote transactions in sustainable sectors like renewable energy, energy efficiency and sub sectors of waste and water. Lastly, internal expertise and know-how on sustainability will be brought together throughout the bank.

To support more business with sustainable clients and deals, commercial incentives, KPIs and marketing efforts will be employed. The team will work closely with the ING Sustainability department, Environmental and Social Risk Desk, ING Green Bank and several other teams within ING Bank and ING Lending Services that contribute to ING’s understanding of sustainability and improving its performance. The SLT operates on global scale and reports to the Lending Services management team on a quarterly basis.

For questions or more information, please contact the Sustainable Lending team via Sustainable.Lending@ingbank.com