Sustainability is now a central issue in society. Within companies too, its importance is growing year on year. We at MünchenerHyp have long felt that more intensive engagement with this subject is vital. There are a variety of reasons for this.
As one of Germany’s largest cooperative banks, we are particularly committed to the cooperative values of solidarity, fairness, partnership, responsibility and proximity. These are also key elements in the modern concept of sustainability. They are also the foundation on which the basic pillars of our business model rest: responsible, low-risk lending and long-term-oriented refinancing with maturities as closely matched as possible through issue of our Pfandbriefe. Our primary strategic objective is the achievement of sustainable business performance.
Our stakeholders – e.g. our customers, sales partners and investors, but also the supervisory authorities – also expect us to assume social responsibility. Above all, our responsibility relates to the properties we finance: Buildings are responsible for approximately 40 percent of EU CO2 emissions – so energy efficiency measures in the building sector make a vital contribution to climate protection. However, a company’s responsibility also extends to its own employees, who expect sustainable values to play a central role in their day-to-day relations with one another.
To fulfil our own aspirations, as well as to meet external expectations, we focus in particular on our core business, property financing and refinancing; in 2014, for example, we issued the world’s first ESG Pfandbrief. The basis for this is our sustainability management work, which is embedded into the organisation in the form of our Sustainability Committee, which comprises twelve staff members from various departments within of the Bank. We are committed to playing a pioneering role in the field of sustainable property financing in Germany.
Our understanding of sustainability is broad. So, on the one hand, we offer our private customers “green” loans, which provide financial support for energy-efficient buildings by means of an interest rebate. Today every tenth loan we extend is a green loan. On the other hand, the social dimension is also important to us. This is why, in early 2018, we launched the Family Loan, designed to help middle-income families achieve the dream of owning their own home. In our understanding of sustainability, economic, environmental and social aspects all have equal importance. We want to systematically embed all of these aspects into our core business of private and commercial property financing, and refinance these loans equally sustainably. You can see how far we have come in our endeavours in our Sustainability Report and the full GRI Report.
Dr Louis Hagen,
Chairman of the Board of Management of Münchener Hypothekenbank