Working Group
Money and Insurance Business
Business-ecological and social benchmarking for financial service providers
Since 1994, the OGUT working group “money and insurance business“ deals with opportunities to create an ecologically sound financial services sector. Its members are environmental and sustainability officers of major Austrian financial service providers. In order to visualize the own environmental and social performance and better communicate it to the public, the OGUT working group “money and insurance business” uses business-ecological and social benchmarking for Austrian financial service providers. The group thus envisages an intensified exchange of experiences in the field of sustainability management and attempts to optimize sustainability reporting of the sector.
The Guideline
One outcome of the working group is a guideline, which serves as an instrument for financial service providers who aim at participating in the benchmarking of business-ecological and social indicators. The conjointly established sector-specific indicators help to better communicate and compare the own environmental and social performance. The guideline was first published in 2002. On 18 January 2007 OGUT and Kommunalkredit collectively presented an extended and fully revised guideline. The new guideline “Benchmarking for financial service providers – business-ecological and social indicators” integrates the social dimension of sustainability for the first time. Social data were compiled next to ecological indicators, such as days of education and professional training per employee, the labour turnover rate, the number auf full-time and part-time employees, and the share of women in management positions.
The new guideline motivates companies in the financial services industry to implement sustainability criteria and provides comprehensive background information and best practice examples for improving the analysed domains.
The guideline was presented on 18 January 2007 as part of an OGUT press conference.