Having met the highly demanding criteria for inclusion in the Corporate Knights index for the first time in 2015, BNP Paribas has climbed 46 places in the space of four years and is now ranked in 36th place.
Once again this year BNP Paribas has made further progress, gaining six places versus the 2017 ranking. BNP Paribas, which is the only French bank on the list, is moreover the second-highest ranking international bank and the first European Bank in the CKG100 index.
This year, the BNP Paribas Group is judged to have especially excelled when it comes to having a positive impact on society and the environment and in its efforts to promote gender equality. In addition, the Group is identified as one of the few banks to have incorporated CSR indicators into the deferred variable component of its top management compensation plan; the CSR criteria count for 20% of the overall conditions for payment of this component.
View the 2018 ‘Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations’ rankings
“This is the best score ever achieved by BNP Paribas since we first appeared in the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations index in 2015. We’re very proud to be included in these high-profile international rankings as the number 2-ranked international bank and we’re the only French bank mentioned. The progress we’ve made is proof positive of the efforts made by all the Bank’s businesses to attain the environmental, social and governance targets we have set for ourselves.”
Corporate Knights, which publishes the ‘magazine for clean capitalism’, is a Toronto-based independent media, research and financial information specialist.
The ‘Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations’ index lists the hundred companies worldwide that have done most to promote sustainable development and succeeded in balancing financial performance with corporate social responsibility. To compile its 2018 rankings, Corporate Knights examined 7,425 companies, measuring them against their sector rivals on the basis of 17 performance indicators.
Extra-financial ratings
Extra-financial ratings are drawn up by assessing the environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies pursued by companies, sovereign states or other issuers of financial securities. The ratings are designed to enable a direct comparison of ESG practices between the issuers of listed and non-listed securities.
This type of corporate rating is also referred to as a ‘declarative’ rating, as opposed to a ‘requested’ rating, since the extra-financial ratings agencies are not commissioned and remunerated by the company being rated but by investors who wish to take account of ESG criteria in their long-term investment decisions.
