Five Pakistani commercial banks score low on policy commitments to climate change, human rights, gender equality, tax and labour rights, among others

ISLAMABAD, Dec. 14, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Policy rankings of five commercial banks in Pakistan show disclosure gaps and low policy commitments on climate change, human rights, gender equality, and labour rights., while none disclose policies on nature and tax when lending money to companies.

Fair Finance Pakistan (FFP) has launched its first ever policy rankings of five leading commercial banks in Pakistan with the support of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and Profundo. Titled, "Benchmarking the Sustainability Policies of Banks in Pakistan," the policy assessment evaluated the sustainability policies of Habib Bank Limited (HBL), Allied Bank, National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), Meezan Bank, and Muslim Commercial Bank (MCB) across ten thematic areas in the Fair Finance Guide International (FFGI) Methodology, including climate change, corruption, gender equality, human rights, labor rights, nature, arms, tax, transparency and accountability and financial consumer protection.

Dr. Abid Burki, Professor Emeritus, LUMS revealed the results and presented average scores for the themes of financial consumer protection, 4.62 out of 10; corruption, 3.18 out of 10; gender equality, 1.48 out of 10; and transparency and accountability, 1.08 out of 10. For all the other themes, the average score for the five banks is inferior to 1 out of 10, which reveals a lack of public policies on most of the sustainability topics assessed.

Asim Jaffry, Country Program Lead, Fair Finance Pakistan: "Finance must be repurposed to address society's challenges and must redouble efforts for clean air, clean water and save the liveable planet for our future generations."

With an average score of of 0.5 out of 10 for addressing policies on climate change, HBL, Allied, MCB, Meezan and National Bank have not publicly disclosed any climate policies aligned with the Paris Agreement in banks' lending and investment activities.

All five banks scored less than 1 out of 10 in human rights and labour rights policy ratings. None of the banks disclosed human rights policies related to their investment or financing, neither have they formulated public labor rights expectations for their clients and investee companies. HBL, Meezan bank, Allied Bank, MCB and National bank of Pakistan have zero scores on nature and arms.

Access full report here: https://bit.ly/3T3ZDXq

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