First Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Bank on how following the principles of sustainable development helps to reduce the negative impact on the environment
About the expert: Alexander Vedyakhin started working at Sberbank in 1999 in Volgograd, worked his way up from a senior controller-cashier to a deputy branch manager, and in 2008 he took the position of first deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank in Ukraine. In 2012-2015, he was a member of the Board of Directors and was the chief risk officer (CRO) at DenizBank, a subsidiary of Sberbank in Turkey. Since 2015, he has held the position of Senior Vice President of Sberbank, CRO of the Sberbank Group, Head of the Risks Block, including the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Competence Development Center for Data Research. Since June 2018 — First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank. Supervises the Retail Business, Corporate Business, CIB, Wealth Management, Territorial Development Blocks, the Troubled Assets Department, and the Directorate for Energy Saving and Environmental Management Projects.
The “green” economy is becoming an increasingly significant technological driver every day: renewable energy, smart homes, offices and entire cities, technologies that reduce the negative human impact on the environment – all this is already our reality. Understanding and accepting this, we actively finance “green” projects, including alternative energy and standard solutions in the field of municipal solid waste.
Sberbank, as a company whose active clients include two-thirds of the population of our country, feels its direct responsibility for shaping the future of the country, and it largely depends on what kind of world our children and grandchildren will live in. The bank’s environmental policy covers all areas, from working with external clients and investors to a responsible behavior model for each employee.
Digitalization versus deforestation
One of the priorities for us is to move towards a world without paper. We strive to reduce the use of paper both in the sale of banking products to customers and in the bank’s internal processes. In 2019, when working with clients, we managed to reduce the amount of paper used over 440 million sheets. The height of such a stack of paper is more than 40 km! Such indicators were achieved thanks to the storage of documents in electronic form, new digital confirmation methods, the transfer of transactions to remote channels and other initiatives of the past year.
In particular, we have launched a special document management service for corporate clients, which is integrated into the Internet bank and is available to all Sberbank Business Online users. Now users can send more than 160 different types of electronically signed documents through this service. Of the 2,6 million companies operating in this system, more than 850 thousand have already switched to electronic document management.
- In five months of 2020, more than 5 million documents were sent through the service, which helped save about 15 million sheets of paper, or about 1 trees.
Sberbank Business Online also offers the Document Designer service, which has more than 1,4 templates. And the Electronic Archive service allows you to systematize all documentation and store it in electronic form.
As for the bank’s internal processes, here we have achieved significant results in the issue of abandoning the use of paper documents. By revising processes as part of the Digital Inside program, we managed to reduce the number of paper documents processed and stored in the bank’s archive by 36%, which is about 600 million sheets annually.
- Our goal by 2021 is to reduce the number of paper documents processed at the bank by 83% compared to 2018.
We are also moving to digital maintenance services and the release of remote products. For example, for individuals, in addition to classic products, we offer digital cards, which are not even supposed to be issued in plastic. At the same time, the set of options for making financial transactions with such cards does not differ from those provided for conventional debit or credit cards – transactions are available both offline and online. A digital card can be issued in Sberbank Online and perform the usual operations.
- Since the beginning of the year, the release of such cards has saved more than 4 tons of plastic.
We are also working on the possibilities of recycling plastic cards.
At Sberbank offices, we implement “green” principles: we install bins for the separate collection of waste by main types – paper, plastic, glass, used batteries, which are then sent for recycling.
We strive to save energy and have reduced our consumption by more than 20% in five years. This year, Sberbank employees took part in the annual Earth Hour environmental campaign. In addition to the fact that they turned off the lights in their homes for one hour as a sign of solidarity with the entire planet, we also turned off light signs and signs in more than 3 thousand offices and branches of Sberbank.
Finally, the “green office” implies the digitalization of processes. As I mentioned, this reduces the amount of paper used in the first place, but ultimately reduces deforestation.
Sberbank employs many people who care about what the world of the future will be like. Therefore, we have opened the “Ecological Club” – an online platform for those who are interested in issues related to the environment, the principles of thrifty and conscious consumption, and environmental protection. On the website of the Ecoclub, our colleagues can access lectures, seminars, manuals from the best experts in the field of ecology, find like-minded people in order to exchange experience and best practices, as well as receive detailed information about the bank’s environmental initiatives.
Company with principles
However, not only ecology occupies an important place in the strategy and culture of Sberbank – we are generally concerned about issues of sustainable development, everything that is usually meant by the abbreviation ESG (environment, social, governance), and in Russian – ESG (environmental, social and managerial projects). Therefore, a section on sustainable development was included in the 2019 Annual Report.
These issues are regularly considered at meetings of the Supervisory Board of Sberbank. We have separate departments and employees whose functions include systematic work towards sustainable development, but in general, the range of tasks covers almost all departments of the bank.
Today it is impossible to be a successful company in the global market without following the principles of ESG. Fortunately, more and more corporations share them, including in our country. ESG factors are increasingly taken into account when making business decisions, they are paying attention to rating agencies, investors and consumers.
According to Nielsen Global Research, among consumers worldwide:
- 41% are willing to pay more for organic products;
- 38% – for goods that do not harm nature;
- 30% for products supporting social responsibility.
Among those surveyed in our country, 57% said it was “extremely” or “very important” for them that companies implement programs to protect the environment.
All of us – business, employees, and consumers – need to join our efforts and try to live in such a way that future generations will thank us for uncut forests, clear skies and clear rivers.
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