Barclays 2009 Annual Report Download - page 25

www.barclays.com/annualreport09 Barclays PLC Annual Report 2009 23
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Further information on our Sustainability
policies and performance is available at
www.barclays.com/sustainability
In April 2009, we committed to make an additional £11bn of credit
available to the UK economy over the year. Our gross new lending in 2009
was £35bn, about half to households and half to businesses.
Financial inclusion
In the UK our Cash Card Account is an entry-level bank account with almost
844,000 customers, many living in deprived areas, while Money Skills
is a new programme designed to help disadvantaged people make
informed, responsible financial decisions.
Across Africa, we offer dedicated accounts for people on low incomes,
and are one of the only global banks to work with indigenous financial
systems as a way of providing wider access to financial services.
Environment
As part of our commitment to minimising our environmental footprint, we
successfully made our global banking operations carbon neutral in 2009.
Barclays Climate Action Programme continues to focus on greater
energy efficiency, as well as working with suppliers to reduce their CO2
emissions and developing products and services that will help our
customers to do the same.
Partnerships are also a crucial part of the programme, such as our work
with the World Wildlife Fund in eastern Africa to pioneer a new era of
conservation in the region where communities are supported to utilise their
resources more sustainably.
Many of our major environmental and social impacts are indirect and
arise through business relationships with suppliers and clients. Our
Environmental and Social Impact Assessment policy focuses on any lending
we carry out in sensitive sectors and is also the mechanism by which we
apply the Equator Principles to our projects. The Equator Principles are based
on the International Finance Corporation’s Performance standards, which
form the financial services industry standard to manage environmental and
social risks in project finance deals above US$10m.
Our Environmental Risk Management team operates across the
Group, and in 2009 it assessed more than 290 project and non-project
finance transactions.
Key points
– £35bn gross new lending to UK households and
businesses
– More than 58,000 employees received direct support
for fundraising and volunteering
Diversity and our people
Our diversity and inclusion strategy is focused on increasing the number
of senior women across our business. To read more, refer to page 24.
Citizenship
With more than 48 million customers in over 50 countries, we must act as
a responsible global citizen. This means ensuring that we do business in a
socially and ethically responsible way, while working with our supply chain
partners to ensure they adopt a similar set of principles.
Barclays believes that banks have a crucial role to play within the
communities they serve – even more so during these challenging
economic times.
In 2009, as well as committing over £55m to community initiatives
around the world, we also invested our skills and resources. 58,000
employees gave their time to support a wide range of projects, from helping
those affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa, to providing free financial advice for
elderly people in the UK.
Barclays operates in accordance with the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, and Barclays Statement on Human Rights further integrates
these issues through our employment policies and practices, our supply
chain and the responsible use of our products and services.
In 2009, working with the United Nations Environment Programme
Finance Initiative, we developed a human rights toolkit, which provides a
framework for lending managers and which we have embedded into our
own employee guidance tools on environmental risk.
As well as managing our own direct social, ethical and environmental
impacts, by working closely with our suppliers we can help them to share
our commitment to sustainability.
This was underlined in 2009 with the launch of a new statement on
Supply Chain Sustainability, outlining how we work with suppliers and what
we expect from them in return.
Banking on Change
partnership
Developed partnership with CARE
International and Plan International
to improve access to basic financial
services in Africa, Asia and South
America
Three-year initiative intends to
reach 500,000 people and is a
£10m commitment by Barclays
In 2008, Barclays committed to a global
three-year partnership with non-
governmental organisations (NGOs)
CARE International and Plan International
in order to extend innovation and
accelerate sustainable access to basic
financial services. The three-year initiative
aims to reach more than 500,000 people
across Africa, Asia and South America
and represents a £10m commitment
by Barclays.
The partnership perfectly combines
the experience and delivery structures of
the two
NGOs with the financial expertise
of Barclays.
Together this will enable us to
promote and train community groups on
savings-led community finance and create
bespoke financial channels, products
and services.
The initiative gives individuals the
opportunity to save regularly and provides
communities with a way to manage their
money, increasing their ability to deal with
life emergencies, and invest in their own
and their children’s future.