Ziraat Participation Bank Sustainability Studies

Ziraat Participation Bank continues its sustainability journey with the vision of becoming a universal, reputable and leading participation bank that offers more to its customers as it shares at every stage in order to contribute to the economy, environment and society. It endeavours to address the issues evaluated with the understanding of ethical banking and sustainability, which overlap with the principles of Participation Banking, through corporate sustainability practices. With these practices, it is among the main goals of Ziraat Participation Bank to further improve its position and competitiveness in the sector. Based on these basic points, it continues to work as a bank focused on spreading, developing and maintaining sustainability throughout the value chain.

Ziraat Participation Bank Sustainability Structuring

A Sustainability Committee was established under the leadership of Ziraat Participation General Directorate in order to ensure that sustainability activities are spread throughout the bank and integrated into differentiated business processes in parallel with the vision, strategy, goals and business plans on sustainability issues, especially climate change. Committee members consist of Ziraat Participation General Manager, Assistant General Managers, Head of Strategy Planning Department and Head of Corporate Communications Department. The internal coordination of the sustainability structure is carried out by the Strategy Planning Department, which is the Sustainability Coordinator. In Ziraat Participation Bank, 6 Sub-Working Groups coordinated by the Sustainability Coordination Department were established in order to realise the actions and targets determined by the committee.

1-Corporate Management Group Working Areas

Defining sustainability roles and responsibilities, sustainability reporting, monitoring and informing about sustainability-related legislation and laws, determining sustainability-related policies and implementing them within the bank.

2-Corporate Social Responsibility and Education Group Work Areas

Identifying and realising Corporate Social Responsibility project themes, organising sustainability trainings and capacity development within the organisation, participating in panels and workshops on sustainability.

3-Operational Environmental Impacts Group Working Areas

Waste management, water management, energy management, supply chain management, resource consumption, creation of greenhouse gas inventory and following the best practices in this field and producing solutions for prevention, reduction, saving and efficiency studies.

4- Indirect Environmental Impacts Group Working Areas

Work is being carried out in areas including the establishment of the Environmental & Social Risk Assessment System within our Bank, analysing the portfolio with environmental and social risks, calculating emissions from the portfolio, and managing climate risks.

5-Sustainable Products and Services Group Work Areas

Establishing a sustainable finance framework at Ziraat Participation Bank, working on green and social financing products in areas that Turkey and the portfolio will need, working on products and services that will serve sustainable development goals, and developing digital services that can be offered to our individual and corporate customers through different channels.

6-Green Sukuk Group Working Areas

The main areas of work include determining green and social sukuk themes and contents, developing KPI tracking systems for green and social sukuk, green & social sukuk portfolio management, and making contacts with international financial institutions.

Corporate Governance and Communication at Ziraat Participation Bank

The policies approved by the Board of Directors of Ziraat Participation Bank, which form the framework of the actions carried out and targeted with the understanding of Sustainable Banking, were published.

- Sustainability Policy

- Environment and Climate Change Policy

- Policy on Management of Environmental and Social Impacts in Financing Activities

Ziraat Participation Bank continues to work on expanding its focus areas by including sustainability issues under these 3 main policies.

On the other hand, within the framework of its sustainable banking approach, it aims to create a business environment that respects human rights and to raise the awareness and consciousness of its employees to the highest level. In this context, a human resources policy framework has been prepared to ensure that Ziraat Participation Bank acts diligently in fulfilling the requirements of international conventions accepted by Turkey, especially the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the basic principles of the International Labour Organization (ILO) such as human rights, labour rights, children's rights and social justice. In order to follow up on studies such as legislation and good practice guidelines published in relation to sustainability, evaluations are made with the participation of the relevant units in the corporate governance working group.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Capacity Building

Sustainability training was organised for managers working in Ziraat Participation Headquarters units. With an online module that conveys the development, trends, practices and frameworks of ESG issues on the in-house training portal, the level of knowledge and awareness of employees in this field is tried to be increased. Within the scope of capacity development for new employees, a syllabus including ESG, Sustainable Finance, Green and Social Investments, Climate Change was created within the orientation programme. In addition, our human rights and human resources policy is also available on our corporate website. Efforts are being made to associate existing social responsibility projects carried out within the institution with sustainable development goals and to organise new thematic projects, workshops and organisations in these areas.

Ziraat Participation Environment and Climate Change

The Environment and Climate Change policy was published in order to monitor and evaluate the Bank's internal environmental impacts and occupational health and safety performances. Within the scope of the activities carried out within this scope, activities in accordance with zero waste principles are carried out at the Head Office and branches. The zero waste certification processes of Ziraat Participation Headquarters building have been completed and the actions carried out to obtain zero waste certificates for the branches continue.

In order to evaluate the suppliers in the value chain and the products purchased in terms of environmental and social aspects, efforts are underway to prepare a supply chain policy and to ensure compliance with this policy by suppliers. On the other hand, current situation analyses have been made within the scope of the bank's compliance with the ISO 14001 environmental management system, and it is planned to take the necessary steps for the certification system and to organise trainings that will keep this system alive, contribute to the processes and enable the bank to pass the relevant audits. Subsequently, we will continue process improvements with ISO 14064 studies.

Within the scope of the institution's energy efficiency and saving efforts; lighting systems that will provide energy efficiency, printer adjustments to save paper, card applications and e-signature models are in progress. In this context, Ziraat Participation Bank plans to implement projects to reduce carbon emissions, equipment to save water in buildings, practices to reduce waste generation in buildings and the use of green electricity in buildings and locations within the action plans.

In addition, with the energy monitoring systems that we have piloted in our branches, optimisation studies have also been carried out to save energy in branches. We aim to implement these studies throughout our branch network and contribute to efforts to reduce our scope 2 emissions in particular.

At the point of calculating carbon emissions; Ziraat Participation's efforts to consolidate resource consumption and subsequently calculate scope emissions continue with the development of an integrated system management module in addition to the existing ERP system in order to provide easy and accurate data that will contribute to greenhouse gas inventory calculation, verification and reporting studies. In addition, the head office buildings in the new location in the Istanbul Finance Centre will ensure that the work carried out in this context is managed more systematically and technologically with LEED gold certification compliant studies. Ziraat Participation carries out sector researches by making use of very good practices in order to create a greenhouse gas inventory and reduce carbon emissions.

Sustainable Finance:

Within the scope of sustainable finance practices, we have carried out the establishment of the Environmental and Social Risk Assessment system at Ziraat Participation Bank. Our efforts to integrate the ESRD system into the existing credit risk assessment system are ongoing. Training was provided to the personnel who will carry out the relevant assessments. Within the scope of the ESRD (Environmental and Social Risk Assessment) system, we have a list of Non-Financed Activities. In financing projects above a certain amount within the scope of ESRD, studies are being organised to establish additional follow-up mechanisms for projects that are found to be risky and where the information on the region and the project is examined in order to prevent negative environmental and/or social impacts on the region where the projects are located.

In this context, an evaluation system based on IFC performance standards has been designed to assess the environmental and social impacts of the region or project, labour and working conditions, resource efficiency and pollution prevention, public health, safety, land, sustainable management of biodiversity and living natural resources, local people and cultural heritage.

At this point, Ziraat Participation Bank aims to ensure the development of sustainable products and services within the scope of sustainable finance practices. In this context, we have carried out our sustainable sukuk framework study. Our efforts to issue sustainable sukuk based on this framework continue. In addition, we offered products such as renewable energy investment and operating financing, energy efficiency investment and operating financing, waste water treatment and recovery investment and operating financing, which are among our sustainable financing products for our commercial customers. In addition, we offered products such as green home housing financing, electric vehicle financing, individual energy efficiency management financing for our individual customers.

On the other hand, among the future targets of Ziraat Participation Bank, we continue our planning and infrastructure works in order to calculate scope 3 emissions from our portfolio prepared within the framework of sustainable finance practices and to make the emissions of the portfolio net zero compatible and to manage climate risks.

Communication and Stakeholder Engagement

The sustainability bulletin, which is published quarterly within the organisation, aims to strengthen sustainability communication. By addressing a different theme in each bulletin, the development of sustainability in the international and national arena, trends, issues associated with finance, sectoral information and the activities carried out in the bank are conveyed to the employees through this bulletin.

In order to receive contributions such as complaints and suggestions from external and internal stakeholders, there is a guidance on the sustainability page of the corporate website.

For sustainability communication, work is carried out to increase internal communication with the e-mails of working groups, the content on the sustainability page on the Ziraat Participation Bank portal. At the point of stakeholder participation, memberships and collaborations that can contribute to Ziraat Participation Bank in the finance sector and other related sectors are also evaluated. In this context, Ziraat Participation Bank aims to increase sustainability communication and stakeholder participation with idea competitions, employee events and organisations that will serve the field.