Standard Chartered launches 2013 Sustainability Review

Today, Standard Chartered launches its 2013 Sustainability Review, which captures the progress and commitments that we have made in supporting social and economic development across the markets in which we operate.

Sustainability is integrated in how we do business, guiding everything we do from the services we provide, to the way we run our bank and support local communities. The annual Sustainability Review details how the Bank has delivered against its sustainability priorities: contributing to sustainable economic growth, being a responsible company and investing in communities.

Read the full report

In 2013, the Bank contributed to sustainable economic growth across its markets by promoting and extending access to financial services, and sharing our expertise. Some highlights of our work in these areas include:

• We provided USD20.6 billion of financing to small and medium-sized enterprises across 32 markets.
• We pledged to increase financing to SMEs by 45 per cent to USD30 billion between 2013-2018 as part of our commitments at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).
• Under the Standard Chartered Saadiq brand, we expanded our Islamic banking services into Africa and increased our lending globally to USD20 billion.
• We provided USD774 million of project financing to support the power sector across our markets.
• We pledged to finance USD2 billion in power projects by 2018, as part of the Power Africa initiative led by the US government to promote access to electricity across Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2013, we participated in the ongoing Azura independent power project in Nigeria.
• We offered more than 30 workshops to central banks and ministries of finance on topics such as the internationalisation of the renminbi, Islamic finance, debt capital markets and the use of derivatives to manage financial risk.

We are proud to work closely with the communities in which we operate to promote sustainable development through a number of community investment programmes:

• 2013 was the 10th anniversary of our flagship health community investment programme, Seeing is Believing. In this landmark year, over USD12 million was raised (including Bank matching). In the last decade, we have raised over USD63 million for Seeing is Believing, and we are well on track to meet our target of raising USD100 million by 2020.
• We also launched the SiB Innovation Fund to promote solutions to tackle avoidable blindness, which awarded eight innovation grants totalling USD1 million.
• Goal, our flagship education programme, reached nearly 40,000 girls in 2013.
• We made a further commitment under the CGI to reach an additional 500,000 girls globally by 2018.
• Bank employees undertook more than 90,300 volunteering days, an increase of 5 per cent on 2012.

Peter Sands, Group Chief Executive at Standard Chartered PLC, said: “Our strategy is to bank the people and companies driving investment, trade and the creation of wealth across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. We are committed to supporting our clients and customers, creating value for our shareholders and making a broader social and economic contribution to the markets where we operate.”

For further information, please contact:

Neema Patel
Media Relations Manager
Tel: +44(0) 20 7886 6239
Email: Neema.Patel@sc.com