ING took the honours for winning the lender trophy at the IJGlobal ESG Awards 2024, impressing the judges with strategies that lead by example, backed up by walking the walk.

One of the judges said: “ING has achieved impressive ESG integration into systems, with market leading processes ensuring the integrity of their financings across ESG. This institution is clearly a leader in the banking field in Europe.”

Another of the judges added: “ING made a thorough and well explained submission, quoting relevant deals with genuine impact. ESG must include transition which is evident in the submission, but it’s clear that this bank is at the forefront of evolution in this space.”

ING clearly states its intention to lead on the ESG front, putting sustainability at the heart of everything it does, “defining new ways of doing business where planet and people are just as important as economic growth”.

It has policies in place that are designed to manage the most relevant environmental and social risks; foster the protection of nature and human rights; advancing financial health and inclusion for customers and communities; while also empowering employees to contribute to it all.

ING in March 2023 further restricted the financing of new upstream oil and gas fields, followed at the end of the year by a bank-wide decision to phase out the financing of O&G by 2040 while also tripling renewable energy financing by 2025.

The bank has also committed to restricting the financing of coal-fired power generation to close to zero by 2025, as well as providing sustainable alternatives for main retail products in all markets by next year.

Over the course of the last calendar year (2023), ING invested €115 billion in sustainable financing, supporting 792 sustainability deals.

According to the submission: “We use our Terra approach to steer the most carbon-intensive parts of our loan book towards net zero by 2050. The sectors in scope are power generation, oil and gas, automotive, shipping, aviation, steel, cement, residential mortgages and commercial real estate.

“We apply what we consider to be the best-fit methodology to measure the transition that needs to happen in the economy and set the targets we are required to meet to achieve emissions reductions.”

ING’s sustainable finance team works in collaboration with its front-office relationship managers to advise clients on translating their climate and sustainability ambitions into their financing through innovative sustainability-linked structures and “use of proceeds” solutions like green and social financing, also providing advice on ESG ratings and other ESG-related topics.

It has developed a bespoke “client transition plan” tool to help with client engagement to be able better to assess the clients’ climate performance and have these conversations, and then use insights to identify risks and opportunities for supporting their transitions.

In terms of the future current account in Germany, by the end of 2023, some 21,000 “future current accounts” were opened, resulting in more than €90 million in sustainable deposits that are matched with sustainable loans and investments.