Barclays 2006 Annual Report Download - page 147

Barclays PLC
Annual Report 2006 143
Governance
2
Corporate responsibility
Responsible banking
The past year has seen another marked increase in the profile of
corporate responsibility as a topic of global strategic significance. Two
issues have dominated debate – the emergence of climate change and
its consequences as the most pressing challenge facing the world and
the evolution of thought on social, ethical and environmental issues
under the overarching concept of ‘sustainability’.
For Barclays, corporate responsibility is embodied in the concept of
‘responsible banking’ – reflecting its place at the heart of our strategy as
an integral part of the way in which we do business. Firmly based on the
clear values enshrined in our Guiding Principles, responsible banking
means making informed, reasoned and ethical decisions in our business
dealings with customers, clients, employees and our other stakeholders.
Our Guiding Principles of Winning Together, Customer Focus, The Best
People, Pioneering and Trusted describe how we expect our employees
to behave with external stakeholders and each other. Responsible
banking is the approach by which we aim to progress towards
sustainability – recognising that we will succeed in our strategic and
financial goals only if we have a strong commitment and focus on
achieving sustainable outcomes for all stakeholders.
We make our greatest contribution to society by being good at what we
do and by doing so responsibly – by helping our customers meet their
financial goals through providing competitive products and services
that contribute to economic growth, and in contributing to healthy
financial systems around the world.
Our corporate responsibility priorities are informed by regular dialogue
with a wide range of organisations and in 2006 we undertook a much
broader programme of formal and informal dialogue with investors,
non-governmental organisations, customers, our employees and
politicians. Our approach is focused on the following areas:
•Our customers
•Financial inclusion
•Responsible lending
•Environment and climate change
•Supply chain management
•Our employees
•Community investment
This is underpinned by a strong governance framework.
Governance
The Group Chief Executive, supported by the Group Executive
Committee, has primary responsibility for embedding ‘responsible
banking’ throughout Barclays. This includes setting strategy and the
identification, review and reporting of all business issues (whether
risks or commercial opportunities) which have an important social,
environmental or ethical dimension.
The Brand and Reputation Committee, a sub-committee of Group
Executive Committee, is chaired by Sir Nigel Rudd, Deputy Chairman
and a non-executive Director on the Board. The Committee’s role is to
identify and manage issues of reputational significance to the Barclays
Group. The Committee met three times during the year.
The Community Partnerships Committee sets the policy and provides
governance for our global community investment, and the
Environmental Steering Group provides direction and governance to
support our environmental and climate change strategies.
Corporate responsibility is firmly established as one of the Board
Governance Standards, providing for internal control and governance
and establishing ‘responsible banking’ as a key area of profile and
measurement within our risk management processes.
Ethical indices
Barclays is a long-standing member of the Dow Jones Sustainability
and FTSE4Good ethical indices. Our ranking in the Business in the
Community Corporate Responsibility Index rose to 3rd position out of
131 companies. In the Carbon Disclosure Project, we were ranked in the
top 50 of the global FT 500 companies.
Our customers
An unswerving focus on our customers lies at the heart of our Guiding
Principles. We are committed to providing them with excellent products
and services and doing so in accordance with our ten established
principles for treating customers fairly, with openness and with
transparency. Our aim is to improve the information we give to
customers so that they can make better informed decisions in line with
their own circumstances and needs.
We have made a large investment in improving our customer service,
most notably in our UK Retail Business. We are, therefore, encouraged
to see that the progress we reported last year has been maintained in the
areas of customer satisfaction and advocacy, as we have implemented
steps to improve products and to rectify challenges in key areas such as
mortgage processing, where we have made major changes.
Across our other businesses – UK Business Banking, Barclays Capital,
Barclays Global Investors, Barclays Wealth and in our African and
European retail operations, strong levels of customer satisfaction and
advocacy have been sustained.
During the year, we announced our intention to merge our network of
Woolwich branches in the UK into Barclays, at the same time investing
in our branch network and in the Woolwich as our mortgage brand.
This will give Woolwich customers access to all Barclays branches and
ATMs and vice versa. The branches we are bringing together are near
neighbours – 300 metres or less apart and there will be no change in
our community footprint as a result.
Financial inclusion
With 2.7 billion people across the world living on less than US$2
per day and some 2.8 million UK adults without access to a bank
account, increasing financial inclusion is both a social imperative and
a commercial opportunity. Our focus in this area has been on our
businesses in the UK and in Africa and specifically on improving both
access to banking and to affordable credit and savings.
In South Africa, Absa’s Customer Education Programme is making
banking more accessible to customers at the lower end of the mass
market through a range of audio visual channels, whilst in the UK we
continued to support agencies such as the Money Advice Trust, Citizens
Advice and Business Debtline.
We increased the number of our Cash Card (basic bank) Accounts,
designed for low income and vulnerable people in the UK, by 85,000 to
464,000 and held a ‘roundtable’ discussion with three consumer groups
– Citizens Advice, the National Consumer Council and SAFE (Services
Against Financial Exclusion), an initiative of Toynbee Hall – to inform
improvements and increase access to this account. New functions have
been added to the account and, based on the feedback, we are giving
more profile to the savings needs of these customers. In the UK, our
personal current account customers can continue to make cash
withdrawals free of charge through the Post Office network.