About

Nedbank Group Limited is a bank holding company that operates as one of the four largest banking groups in South Africa through its principal banking subsidiaries, Nedbank Limited and Imperial Bank Limited. The company’s ordinary shares have been listed on the JSE since 1969.

The group offers a wide range of wholesale and retail banking services through three main business clusters: Nedbank Corporate; Nedbank Capital and Nedbank Retail. Nedbank Group focuses on southern Africa and is positioned as a bank for all – both from a retail and a wholesale banking perspective.

The principal services offered by the group are corporate and retail banking, property finance, investment banking, private banking, foreign exchange, and securities trading. Nedbank Group also generates income from private equity, credit card acquiring and processing services, custodial services, collective investments, trust administration, asset management services and bancassurance.

Nedbank Group’s head office is in Sandton, Johannesburg, with large operational centres in Durban and Cape Town, complemented by an extensive branch and support network throughout South Africa. The group also has banking facilities in Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. These are operated through Nedbank Group’s eight subsidiary and/or affiliated banks, as well as through branches and representative offices in London and on the Isle of Man, with the aim of meeting the international banking requirements of the group’s South African-based multinational clients.

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Strategy

Nedbank: Committed to treading lightly

Everywhere you go on earth, you leave a carbon footprint. Nedbank is committed to ensuring that the impact of its carbon footprint, and that of its employees, is as insignificant as possible.

While global warming is widely recognised as an international issue that rightly deserves the full and urgent attention of politicians and businesses the world over, few people actually ever stop to consider their personal contribution towards this potentially disastrous situation.

While Nedbank, as South Africa’s ‘green bank’, has always proactively championed the cause of conservation and environmental sustainability, the recent worldwide focus on global warming prompted the bank to undertake a group-wide awareness campaign among its staff to raise awareness regarding the role of each employee in contributing to global warming, and the part they can play in addressing this potentially disastrous phenomenon

According to Selby Baqwa, Group Executive for Governance, Compliance and Sustainability for the Nedbank Group, in an organisation the size of Nedbank, with almost 24,000 staff members, the combined impact of each individual on the environment can be significant. ‘As a financial services institution, Nedbank Group obviously doesn’t have the kind of environmental influence you would find at a large mining or production organisation,’ he explains, ‘but we do recognise that the sheer size of our workforce warrants us making every effort to minimise the individual effect on global warming
of each of our staff members through their carbon footprint.’

Our primary footprint is a measure of our direct emissions of CO2, from the burning of fossil fuels for the electricity we use in our homes to the impact of our energy use for transportation. The secondary footprint relates to the emission of CO2 from the lifecycle of mass-produced products we consume – and this is measured from the point of their manufacture by companies to the point where they eventually decompose, if they decompose at all.

According to Baqwa when you start looking into the size of most of our carbon footprints, both primary and secondary, it’s clear that we all seem to have stepped on Mother Nature’s toes.

Every time anyone forgets to switch off a light, leaves the heater on unnecessarily, or drives somewhere that they could easily have walked, they are personally tracking mud over Earth’s once pristine, white-tiled living room floor.

It’s this combined effect of individual human actions that is the focus of Nedbank’s attempts to educate its employees. ‘We want them to become more aware of how their individual actions impact on the earth, especially when these actions are multiplied by 24,000.’

Why should we worry?

According to Baqwa, the relevance of humans’ carbon footprints has come to the fore in recent years on the back of increasing evidence that global warming is, in fact very real, and more frighteningly, that much of it is being caused by human activity.

If we all ignore these facts, global temperatures will continue to rise, eventually wreaking havoc through climate change – affecting crops, water supplies and eventually human and animal health. Fragile ecosystems that help to balance and maintain life as we know it could be permanently altered or even worse, destroyed.

Making a smaller impression

So how do we all do our bit to cool down the impact of global warming on the earth? According to Baqwa, there are some things that everyone at Nedbank can do right now to start reducing our primary contribution to global warming - and they don’t cost a cent. These include:

Local really is best

According to Baqwa, you can also reduce your secondary carbon footprint simply by adjusting your buying habits. For example, imported products that have travelled long distances have generated plenty of CO2 emissions along the way. That’s especially true for products where the packaging and processing are environmentally unfriendly.

‘Rather try to buy products made closer to home,’ he stresses, ‘and when it comes to fruit and vegetables, stick with local suppliers, or even try growing your own and when choosing products, look for those that aren’t over-packaged, especially avoiding plastics and polystyrene where possible.’

‘It’s up to each of us to put our foot down, gently,’ he emphasises, ‘and ensure that we do everything in our power to save our planet from global warming.’

As a financial institution, Nedbank undoubtedly has a smaller carbon footprint than some of the other companies in South Africa, but it makes every effort to do its part in addressing this international issue. Some of the ways in which Nedbank does this are as follows:

• Nedbank Group signed the Energy Efficiency Accord with the Minister of Minerals and Energy in 2005 and is working towards achieving the National Energy Efficiency Strategy targets. Nedbank was a partner for the 2007 national energy efficiency campaign.
• Nedbank Group is a signatory to the  Carbon Disclosure Project, which encourages greater transparency from the corporate sector in how it is dealing with climate change.
• Nedbank was included in the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index, as part of the 2007 Carbon Disclosure Project report for South Africa.
• Nedbank Group’s first energy and carbon audit took place in 2006, and resulted in the preparation of the first carbon footprint for the organisation.
• Nedbank Group is participating in an Old Mutual Group Project aimed at identifying utility savings and energy efficiency initiatives.
• Nedbank runs an Environmental Management Programme, which is structured to promote business practices that support a sustainable environment.
• Nedbank Group is committed to equipping all staff members with the knowledge and tools to lessen their individual and collective carbon footprints.
• Environmental impact assessments are conducted on environmentally sensitive projects financed by Nedbank to ensure that the projects are not damaging the environment.
• Nedbank is the only African bank to subscribe to the Equator Principles - a set of international banking guidelines to ensure that projects financed are socially responsible and environmentally sound.
• In 2006, Nedbank Capital launched the Green Mining Awards as a way of broadening the debate on environmental sustainability among its clients and recognising those African mining and mineral beneficiation operations that have made a significant effort to promote environmentally sustainable mining practices.
• Nedbank has set up a carbon finance team which is involved in the origination of Clean Development Mechanism (“CDM”) projects under the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. These projects will result in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and will generate so-called carbon credits which will be sold to finance the projects. In addition the team will advise companies on the management of the carbon credits generated by their CDM projects, and assist with the negotiation and drafting of carbon credit sale agreements.
• Nedbank’s energy team is financing a number of renewable energy projects.

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