Charity Bank Ltd

Environment

We investigated Charity Bank in 2018 and gave the company our best rating for environmental reporting.

The bank discussed its key environmental impacts in its Corporate Social Responsibility report, as well as the indirect impacts of its lending activities. Impacts listed included: staff travel, communications materials and offices operations. We were also told via email that the bank used renewable energy and recycled and re-used materials wherever possible.

Perhaps most importantly in this sector, the bank did not lend to the fossil fuel industry. It added they considered the environmental benefits of funding projects using social impact assessments. These occurred when the bank was lending money, which was always to charities, social enterprises and organisations with a charitable purpose. The bank’s annual loan portfolio report showed that they a had funded a range of positive projects including two of renewable energy businesses.

Politics

We found that Charity Bank made an annual loan report. This openly identified the borrowers it had supported with loans, and the projects that the money provided by savers had helped to fund for that year. We thought this was a positive policy that encouraged transparency, something that we see as a vitally important part of a democratic system.

Furthermore, we saw that by lending exclusively to social and charitable projects, Charity Bank offered an environmental and social alternative to the mainstream banking sector. We see this to be politically beneficial as it gives consumers an alternative choice.