Sustainability at Saldo Bank
Here at Saldo Bank our vision is to be recognised among the most sustainable neobanks. Providing financial growth in a responsible and sustainable way, taking into account environmental, social and governance related factors.
Our society is slowly working on becoming more sustainable again and we want to be a part of this much needed change. We want to support both our consumer and business customers in making more sustainable choices, both by providing knowledge as well as financing for green investments, but also by providing sustainable financial services to the market.
A part of this strategy is also to minimise any direct impact we have on the environment or any negative impact our actions might have on society.
Our Values
We have divided our values based on the three different pillars of ESG: environmental, social and governance.
Environmental
We want to promote a green transformation in all our actions as well as any actions taken by our customers, stakeholders or partners. The burden on the environment is always taken into consideration in a natural way, whether we are modifying office behavior, remote working recommendations or planning new partnership deals.
Social
We strive for Saldo Bank to be a great place to work at, as well as a responsible partner for our stakeholders and society as a whole. As a company we carry our responsibility both in the wellbeing of our employees and the impact we have on society. We operate in a very sensitive sector and realize that our choices and actions affect the finances and daily lives of our customers. Because of this, we strive to be able to offer products and services with reasonable fees, while still fulfilling our duty of creating profits to our stakeholders. We also want to educate our customers on how they can manage their finances in a responsible manner.
Governance
Saldo Bank aims to be a safe and sound neobank. We are, at our core, a fintech company and this shows in everything we do. Our employees are techies that love to explore new technologies and with these technologies we want to offer our customers a modern and progressive way of banking. We are a neobank responding to the needs of today, while at the same time always looking into the future, trying to anticipate future needs of our customers. A big part of modern banking is also responding to outside threats and changing regulations. Saldo Bank fulfills all governance related requirements and is continuously monitoring and looking out for any external threats.
Goals and objectives
We have chosen some more specific goals to guide our actions during the coming years and which will help us monitor our progress in becoming an even more sustainable neobank. The objectives have been chosen based on where we can see that we can make the greatest positive impact, but also based on a sustainability risk analysis where we decide to focus on areas where the risks are greater. These chosen objectives align with the overall objectives that Saldo Bank has chosen to prioritize from the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Environmental
To provide sustainable products and services
We aim for our products and services to be a sustainable option in the financial market. We also educate and recommend our products to be used to finance green initiatives and investments. When it comes to our business loans, we acknowledge that we have a responsibility to investigate where the money goes to and we have decided to leave some of the more sensitive industries outside the scope of companies we provide financial services to.
To minimize the environmental burden of our services
We aim to minimise the environmental burden of our direct operations as well as any indirect effects it might have. Our company is completely digital and paperless and throughout our operations we aim to consume resources in a responsible way and to recycle any used resources when they come to the end of their usage.
Becoming CO2 negative
As a paperless fintech company without any branch offices, our environmental impact is already quite limited. But we commit to measure and decrease our carbon footprint and being fully CO2 negative.
Social
That a 100% of our employees would recommend us as a workplace
We strive for our employees to be both satisfied with their jobs but also for them to be able to feel meaningful and empowered in the workplace. We have created a well working company spirit where our employees feel trusted and are given freedom to make decisions independently. We value this team spirit and protect it by offering internal referral programs whenever we have ongoing recruitments and measure employee satisfaction with yearly questionnaires.
Diversity and inclusion among employees
Saldo Bank is an inclusive workspace where we do not tolerate discrimination of any kind. We believe that everybody should have equal opportunities to develop a career at Saldo bank, no matter what gender, ethnicity or age they are. We are working on introducing a graduate program, to make it easier for students to make the leap from university to employment and also commit to work towards a better gender ratio on all levels of employee positions by the end of year 2025.
Have a positive effect on society
Saldo Bank is known to be a responsible lender. A responsible lender means that we carefully evaluate each loan application, before granting a loan, making sure that our customers are able to repay their loans. This way we carry our social responsibility of avoiding people taking out more loans than they can handle. We do not want our customers to get into a negative debt circle, which is why we have always been a careful lender as well as provided resources and knowledge about how to manage our personal finances. Saldo Bank also benefits society by increasing liquidity and availability of funding for SMEs. When it comes to our consumer customers, we offer them a short term solution and a safety net to be able to carry on with their daily lives when they need it the most. Which is supported by our internal statistics showing us that most loans are taken to cover household expenses.
Governance
To always meet industry regulations and standards in a safe and customer friendly manner
The financial sector is a heavily regulated industry and we want to meet all of these regulations and standards, while at the same time being able to offer products and services that meet the needs of our customers. We monitor any changes in relevant legislation or regulations and quickly adapt modified requirements.
To ensure safe and secure handling of customer data
Since we offer financial services, it's a given that we operate with a lot of sensitive information and customer data and this is not something that we take lightly. We have introduced mandatory security training sessions to all of our employees and our employees have restricted access to any customer data. Our employees have been trained to recognize any threats or scams to access our data and we are regularly making internal IT audits to ensure that our systems are not vulnerable to attacks.
