Banking for Good — a Vision by Triodos Bank

There are no excuses to wait until the end of the year to invite Triodos Bank, with one of the main themes of 2021 being “Banking for Good”. On December 2nd, we invited Daan Vandevelde, Director Retail Banking of Triodos Bank.

Triodos Bank’s mission statement is “to make money work for positive social, environmental, mental and cultural change”; it has human dignity at its core.

As they are a member and co-founder of the Global Alliance for Banking and values, value-based banking isn’t a new concept. Daan: “We have a clear definition of purposeful banking, Banking on Values or value-based banking. We put the focus on what we call the three P’s: “people, planet and prosperity”. Products and services need to be designed and developed to meet the needs of people and safeguard, at the same time, the environment and society in its broadest sense”.

They focus on 4 components, all value-driven:

• Reduction of property-based emissions for mortgage lending
• Reduction of property-based emissions of business lending
• Growth of natural resources to sequester carbon
• Support biodiversity

He explicitly stated that achieving this purposeful banking comes with the generation of a reasonable profit. Unlike most…