Our approach

Responsible lending

Our credit policies incorporate consideration of ESG risk, regulatory requirements and voluntary commitments.

Responsible investment

We have Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) funds available.  

Climate risk disclosure

We’re increasing our climate risk disclosure and participating in industry initiatives to develop standardised disclosure methodologies.  

Why is this important?

Risk exists in every aspect of our business and throughout the environments in which we operate. Our capabilities in risk management help us to successfully implement our strategic priorities, and develop a resilient and sustainable business that can respond to a constantly changing environment. Read more about our approach to risk management.

What do we do?

We are continuously improving how we incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk into our risk management framework, policies and processes, at both a Group and business level.

This is supported by ongoing work to embed ESG risk considerations into our day-to-day decision making and to refine our processes and tools for managing ESG risk, guided by our Group-wide principles. Download a copy of our ESG Risk Principles (PDF, 444KB).

To help our employees better understand ESG risk, we include ESG risk content in our annual risk awareness training.

Managing ESG risk helps protect our business. It’s also consistent with our broader Corporate Responsibility strategy, which includes ensuring that spending and lending decisions consider environmental and social factors.

For information on how we manage ESG risk in spending (our purchasing decisions), read about our Supply Chain Management.

ESG risk in lending

Our credit policies and processes adhere to changing regulatory requirements, support our approach to risk management and reflect our commitment to meeting voluntary standards, such as the Equator Principles.

At a Group level, we have identified sensitive industries and activities that require a higher level of risk assessment. Read more about our voluntary commitments.

Each of our businesses has policies and processes to identify, assess and manage ESG risks associated with our customers. Among other things, these policies require that each of our businesses is able to:

  • identify relevant legislation and regulatory requirements and assess a customer's compliance with these requirements
  • assess how our customers manage environmental and social risks
  • consider the impact of changes in legislation and regulations on a customer's business
  • consider the impact of changes in societal expectations on a customer's business and the reputation risk that may be associated with a customer, and
  • assess the risk of liability for environmental issues being transferred to the Group entity.

Our approach is to encourage customers to establish good environmental and social management practices, and to seek reliable advice in relation to these matters. Bankers discuss environmental and social risks with their customers as part of their business relationship. This enables them to better identify and assess any risks that may arise on a case-by-case basis.

Responsible investment

NAB Wealth offers hundreds of investment choices to clients because we know everyone has different ideas about how their money should be managed. Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) funds managed within NAB Wealth and externally, are included in these choices.

NAB Wealth believes that environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors are a source of potential risk in its investment portfolios and should be managed prudently. NAB Wealth’s investment managers – a number of whom are Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) signatories – are in the best position to evaluate the extent to which good corporate governance and a sustainable business approach are conducive to delivering long-term investment performance and the management of risk in their funds. That includes important impacts such as ESG factors.

Further information on funds under management in SRI funds can be found in our Sustainability Data Pack (PDF, 3.3MB).

Climate risk disclosure

We recognise that environmental challenges such as climate change are major challenges affecting our economy and society.

The impacts of climate change and climate-related policy will have a growing impact on our business, our customers and the communities in which we operate, so we believe we have a key role to play in providing finance to assist the low carbon transition.

That’s why we continue to be the leading arranger (by market share)1 of project finance to the Australian renewable energy sector. For more information read our Environmental agenda, objectives and strategy.

We’ve developed knowledge and understanding of carbon measurement and management through our commitment to carbon neutrality. We were the first Australian bank to achieve this goal and FY2019 is our 9th year of maintaining carbon neutrality.

A long-standing objective of our climate change strategy has been to learn by doing and then incorporate this knowledge into how we manage environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks, and develop environmental products and services to assist our customers.

We recognise the growing demand for disclosure of information by financial institutions, including banks, to assist investors and other stakeholders to understand carbon risk in lending and investment portfolios.

We believe that in order to meet this need it’s important to have reliable and standardised information on which to base climate risk exposure reporting, and agreed industry standards to account for and report on such exposures. At the current time:

  • there is limited reliable or standardised information reported by clients on which we can base climate risk exposure reporting; and
  • agreed industry standards for the accounting, reporting or disclosure of carbon risk exposure arising from finance, including financed emissions, are now being developed.

Consistent with our commitment to transparency and integrated reporting, we are committed to identifying, developing and implementing ways to improve disclosure on climate risk exposure, through collaboration with other financial institutions in Australia and internationally.

We are committed to:

  • providing disclosure of climate risk information in a manner aligned to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations in NAB Group’s Full Year results reporting over time, taking stakeholder input into account; and
  • collaborating with our Australian banking peers to develop a shared understanding and approaches to climate risk disclosure by financial instititions.

Our climate disclosure commitment is one of our six climate change commitments. Further information about our climate change commitments is available here.

We have participated in the Portfolio Carbon Initiative (PCI) – a joint initiative of United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), the World Resources Institute and the 2 Degrees Investing Initiative – to assist the development of reliable and standardised reporting on carbon-related risk exposure for financial institutions.

In 2018, we undertook the following activities to deliver on our climate change disclosure commitment:

At 30 September 2018, the power generation sector represented $6.2 billion, or ~0.7% of our total Group net EaD, and of this, 68.8% was from renewable energy3. Resources exposure represents ~1.0% of our total Group net EaD, with coal specifically accounting for <0.1% of total Group net EaD4.

We continue to provide a breakdown by geography and sector of our project finance portfolio in our Equator Principles reporting.

Important information

1. Project Finance International 2006-2018 Asia Pacific Initial Mandated Lead Arrangers League Tables – 2018 AUD$ Project Allocation, NAB analysis ranking against four major Australian banks – cumulative volume as at 30 June 2018.

2. NAB Group’s current and prior year CDP responses are available on the CDP website.

3. Prepared in accordance with NABʼs methodology (based upon 1993 ANZSIC standard). Excludes exposures to counterparties predominantly involved in transmission and distribution. Vertically integrated retailers have been included and categorised as renewable where a large majority of their generation activities are sourced from renewable energy.

4. As at 30 September 2018, coal mining is composed of 58% thermal coal exposure and 41% metallurgical coal, with the remaining balance of 1% primarily for peat cutting.

Discover more

Environmental approach

We're committed to understanding and managing the impacts and dependencies of our business on the environment.

Climate change

The impacts of climate change and climate-related policy are having a growing effect on our business, our customers and the communities in which we operate. That's why we're taking action.

Resource scarcity

We’re working towards minimising waste and reducing consumption.

Environmental performance

Our environmental targets, assurance and certifications help us operate more efficiently while addressing key environmental challenges.