Canada’s Challenger Bank™ Introduces ESG Framework

Equitable Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of Equitable Group Inc. released its first full-scale ESG Performance Report with data and commentary to provide stakeholders with transparent, relevant, and comprehensive disclosure on all aspects of environmental, social and governance strategies, practices, and outcomes within Canada’s Challenger Bank^TM.

The Report features the Bank’s challenger perspectives on the connection between ESG and its corporate values through its proprietary ESG framework and is organized according to each of EQB’s five C’s of ESG: Climate (environment), Customers, Challengers (employees), Community, and Corporate Governance.

See related article: Associated Bank Releases 2021 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report

“We are delighted to release our new ESG Performance Report, through which we challenged ourselves to disclose meaningful data, discuss ESG risks and risk management practices and elaborate on the opportunity areas that deeply engage our Bank as we live our purpose of driving change to enrich people’s lives,” said Andrew Moor, President and CEO of Equitable Bank. “It took a serious-minded effort to arrive at the final report. The result, which includes third-party assurance of emissions reporting, is a comprehensive point-in-time review that all stakeholders can rely on. That said, this is only the beginning. Our challenger ethos calls on us to constantly step up our approach rather than settling for the status quo. We will do so by holding ourselves accountable for progress against now publicly available data. As the Bank is soon to become Canada’s 7^th largest bank by assets, effective ESG practices will be of even greater importance to us and our stakeholders in the years ahead.”

Led by metrics, the Bank’s ESG Performance Report not only incorporates disclosure recommendations from several ESG frameworks and standards, such as the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), it also contains key datapoints requested by ESG rating agencies. Recognizing that the ESG landscape is changing rapidly, Equitable is supportive of standardization to increase clarity for issuers, investors, and customers who rely on comparable ESG data to drive decision making. The Bank supports consolidation proposed by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

“In all areas of ESG, we are dedicated to doing our part to drive change and make a difference. In the spirit of transparency, we disclosed material metrics to hold ourselves accountable – consistent with our philosophy that what gets measured gets managed,” added Mr. Moor. “The result of this multi-faceted effort is growing recognition of the Bank’s performance by rating agencies. In 2021, we maintained an AA MSCI rating (on a scale of AAA-CCC) and our Sustainalytics Risk Rating improved by one percentage point to 21.1. We expect more improvement on these ratings in the years ahead as our ESG program matures and develops.”

Source: Equitable Bank