How does the bank impact people and their human rights?

When ABN AMRO publishes this year’s Annual Report, it will also release its latest Human Rights Report. This year is the third time that the bank has prepared this report, which describes how our operations and those of our business partners impact people and their human rights. What are our policies? What human rights are most at risk? What actions does ABN AMRO take? How do we express this respect for human rights in our daily work? Herma van der Laarse and Yuri Herder from Group Sustainability are proud of the result. They spoke with us about ABN AMRO and human rights.

Why do we publish a human rights report?

Herma: “People don’t immediately make the connection between banking and human rights, but of course that connection does exist. As a bank, we impact people’s lives – the lives of almost twenty thousand employees and more than five million retail clients, for a start. But millions of other people worldwide are also affected by the value chains we’re connected to, through our corporate loans and the investments we make on behalf of our clients. As a bank, we want to map out the human rights risks of all those different situations as accurately as possible, and use our leverage to ensure respect for human rights. That’s easier said than done, however. This report shows what we’ve achieved, what dilemmas we face, where we want to improve and what we can do to set things in motion. In the report, we share our insights, present critical questions and initiate a dialogue with stakeholders. It’s a tool for continual improvement.”

Yuri: “Our focus on human rights is the foundation on which our social responsibility is built. By getting the basics rights, we can give shape to our broader social impact ambitions. We’ve set high standards for ourselves, and we want to give transparency about our conduct and our results. We do this with the aid of an international reporting guideline, which is linked to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”

How do we map out our impact on people and human rights?

Yuri: “The report identifies five roles where the bank impacts people and their human rights. The first role is as an employer. The bank has a workforce of almost twenty thousand employees. We’re no different than other organisations, and sometimes labour rights issues can arise in the workplace, for example inappropriate behaviour or discrimination, including differences between what men and women earn, or underrepresentation of women in management positions.

“The second role is as a service provider, in particular in our dealings with retail clients. Human rights can be at risk here too, for example if a client’s privacy is breached or if a prospective client is wrongfully refused a bank account on the grounds of their age or background. But it also covers our duty of care to sell our clients products that are appropriate and transparent. If we don’t, our clients could find themselves in financial problems.”

Herma: “The third role is procurement. As a large enterprise, we work with lots of parties that supply products and services. It’s about workers’ rights in the factories that manufacture our laptops, or at the call centre in South Africa – and of course job security and working conditions for cleaners.

“The fourth role is as a provider of corporate loans, and the fifth as a provider of investment services. The bank lends money to companies, our corporate clients. By providing investment services, we facilitate our clients’ investments in specific companies or funds. How do those companies approach human rights? Take working conditions on a palm oil plantation, for example, or how they deal with the rights of local communities when they want to build a large factory nearby.

“With human rights, people often think of companies in other countries, and we certainly don’t ignore them. By publishing this report, though, we’re highlighting that human rights are an issue not just far away, but also close to home. It’s about a textile factory in Bangladesh, but also about our retail clients’ privacy and our own rights as bank employees.”

What impact has the pandemic of the past year had on human rights?

Herma: “The Covid-19 pandemic has left its mark, as I’m sure everybody can imagine. The bank has worked hard to do everything in its power to help clients. I’m particularly impressed by how quickly we were able to use our network of financial coaches and relationship managers to help the people who needed it most, such as small business owners and mortgage clients. Our people understand how to talk to those clients and what help they need. We showed how fast we can scale up and implement this care.”

Yuri: “The pandemic has highlighted a number of human rights risks. Take migrant workers in the meat processing industry, for example: they don’t always have the best working conditions, and now we saw that those conditions contributed to the spread of the disease. The pandemic has helped to shed more light on these abuses.”

Have we taken any exciting initiatives?

Herma: “Diversity was an issue that received much focus over the past year, and particularly gender diversity. In 2020, for example, the bank became a signatory to the United Nations Women Empowerment Principles, which is a commitment that we take very seriously. We’re working on our targets as an employer. We’ve published a report on the pay gap between men and women, and we’ve talked to clients and experts about preventing gender discrimination in our commercial services. We still have a lot to do, though. It’s a topic that generates much attention outside the organisation, and within the bank too.”

Yuri: “One element in the report that’s new this year is that we’ve highlighted the link between climate change and human rights. For example, the impact of climate change is visible in crop production, flooding, air pollution and so on. Companies that produce large volumes of carbon emissions or contribute to climate change in other ways also impact human rights, either directly or indirectly. We’re not entirely sure just yet how to approach this, but it’s something that we want to talk about with our corporate clients.”

What else has been happening?

Yuri: “We’ve been working hard to ensure the protection of human rights defenders in other countries. Unfortunately, it’s very common for them to be silenced by companies and governments. Many countries are making it more and more difficult for journalists and unions to do their jobs. Some of these advocates are imprisoned, or even murdered. For the bank, they’re an important source for reviewing the practices of our commercial clients in far-off countries, our eyes and ears on the ground. In 2019, we organised a conference where we invited companies to join us in a dialogue with human rights advocates. This vulnerable group is specifically discussed in the most recent update of our Human Rights Statement. We’re also considering what we can do to include this issue in our lending policies.”

Where does this report place us relative to other banks in the Netherlands?

Yuri: “In 2015, we were one of the first six companies to adopt the United Nations Reporting Framework. In 2016 we were the first financial institution worldwide to publish a human rights report based on that framework, and since then we’ve been followed by several other banks. ABN AMRO wants to lead the way and inspire other companies to take action. That’s why we’ve taken our report another step forward this year by asking our auditor EY to provide ‘limited assurance’ on our report.”

Herma: “This means that EY has critically reviewed our texts and data and the underlying processes. They’ve also looked beyond this: how well is respect for human rights embedded in our organisation? ‘Limited assurance’ means that the auditor hasn’t uncovered any evidence of misstatements in the report. As far as we can tell, this makes us the first company anywhere in the word that’s been issued such an opinion on its human rights report. It shows the standard of transparency and quality of our report, and how open we’ve been in explaining our decisions and dilemmas. I’m very proud of this. We call on other companies to start doing the same and look forward to working with them to improve this process.”