How do Swiss banks communicate their commitment to sustainability?
Sustainable commitment, investments with responsibility, even discounted loans for ecological vehicles or Fairtrade Gold: The topic of sustainability is slowly but surely making its way into the financial industry. On behalf of Polarstern, students from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) are investigating how Swiss banks communicate their sustainable commitment and what it brings them.
To find out how banks most effectively approach their sustainability engagement, Polarstern commissioned a group of applied psychology students to take a close look at Swiss banks' current sustainability communications. Excerpts from Polarstern's study:
Sustainability as a core competence
If you ask Wikipedia about Swiss banking, you still read in the first sentence about a "comparatively conservative and sustainable investment". Thus, the topic of sustainability already seems to be included in the Swiss banks' recipe for success. But economic sustainability is also increasingly dependent on ecological and social sustainability.
For example, investments in fossil fuels are becoming increasingly unattractive, while renewable energies are in vogue in the investment world. This makes it all the more important for banks to communicate their activities and commitment in the area of sustainability properly and effectively.
Today's practice under the magnifying glass
The FHNW students are investigating the questions of how and what banks already report on this topic today and what effect they achieve with it. For example, which stakeholders are the main targets of communication?
Which channels are used for which topics and which are the most common labels for certification? In terms of content, it is possible that certain activities in sustainability are communicated very frequently and prominently, while others take place in the background. So which projects are suitable for external communication, which are not, and most importantly, why? An already established sustainability communication element is the sustainability report that many banks publish each year. Here, too, the students will collect data and take a close look at how banks design this report and what significance it has for the company.
With the goal in mind
Finally, the most interesting question is what the right communication actually does and how this can be measured (see here also the research paper on the Controlling in sustainability communication).
