Islamic banks have been particularly industrious in their efforts to integrate an environmental, social and governance focus into their core strategy and operations.
One bank that successfully focused on this last year was Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, which offered an impressive range of ESG-related activities, projects and initiatives across its internal operations, as well as in its support for retail customers and corporate clients.
The positive impact of these initiatives sees ADIB named as Euromoney’s best Islamic bank for ESG. Its acting group chief executive is Mohamed Abdelbary.
At the heart of this activity is the bank’s three-year ESG strategy, which sets a wide range of key target areas and ambitions. These include integrating ESG considerations into investment and finance decisions, reporting on ESG performance and developments, executing an Emiratization strategy, developing financial-inclusion policies and programmes, integrating ESG into governance structures and culture, and promoting gender diversity and employee well-being.
There has been good progress in many of these areas, including in women’s representation in executive roles – women now represent 14% of ADIB’s board and 40% of its entire workforce – and in Emiratization, where its ratio rose to 44%; one of the highest ratios among all UAE banks.
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