Sustainable Impact
We’re committed to enabling inclusive, sustainable growth in Malawi. Our products and services are designed to meet the needs of African businesses, economies and communities and deliver positive social, economic and environmental (SEE) impacts for our partners across the continent.
What is Our SEE Framework
Standard Bank Plc’s is a purpose driven organization that aims to drive Malawi’s growth. As a member of the Standard Bank Group, we are signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Banking (UN PRB) and are committed to ensuring that our strategy is consistent with and contributes to society’s needs and priorities, as expressed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), the Paris Agreement, the African Union’s Agenda 2063, and sustainable banking frameworks.
We achieve our purpose by working through the ten focus areas of our social, economic, and environmental (SEE) framework. This enables us to deliver substantive impact in the markets we operate in. The areas are financial inclusion; job creation and enterprise development; infrastructure; trade and investment; climate change and sustainable finance; education and health.
Our SEE focus areas directly impacted through our commercial activities as well as philanthropic donation fund that comprises of 1% of our Profit After Tax (PAT). We believe that it is imperative for our stakeholders to have a holistic and empirically grounded understanding of the broader impact we generate. This is an important way of deepening the relationships we share with our clients and society at large, and ultimately becoming more than a Bank.
Our SEE Impact Areas
Social
- Health – Malawi needs investment in resilient, accessible, and affordable health systems, with a focus on primary health care, health promotion and preventing disease. A well performing public healthcare system is necessary for our nation to achieve universal health coverage and through partnership we have invested in community-based healthcare programmes through corporate social investment and support the health and well-being of our employees.
- Youth, Empowerment, Education and Skills Development – Education is the cornerstone of economic development and wellbeing for Malawi. With a well-educated population the nation will be in a better position to fight against poverty thereby helping to improve socioeconomic development. Education prevents the transmission of poverty between generations by providing greater opportunities to earn, as well as helping to move other socioeconomic indicators in a positive direction. As a driver for growth, we partner with governments, business and academia to help Malawi’s young people access quality education, skills development and training, to help them acquire the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in and increasingly digitized world.
- Responsible lending – As a financial institution, we have a responsibility to ensure that the financial services we offer to clients such as loans are not detrimental to client’s lives or the community. We have put in place various measures to insure we lend responsibly, for instance, taking a proactive role in ensuring we borrow towards ethical causes, and we refrain from borrowing to causes that align with corruption, violation of human rights, or have any negative impact on the community. We go a step further to offering advice at every stage of the loan process to ensure that our clients get the best out of the deals. In addition, through our affiliation to Standard Bank Group, we have a climate policy put in place that prohibits lending to causes with a detrimental impact on the environment.
Economic
- Financial Inclusion and Enterprise Development – Expanding people’s access to the formal financial system supports economic and human development and reduces inequality. Standard Bank enables individuals, entrepreneurs, small businesses & large local or multinational corporates access relevant and cost-effective financial products and services, including payments, savings, credit and insurance. We strive to understand the needs and preferences of our clients, and provide products and services for specific client groups, such as women and young people. We use digital solutions to depend financial inclusion and empower underserved groups.
- Job Creation – It is estimated that MSME sector contributes about 40% of gross domestic product (GDP) and 24% of employment, and that about 21% of the country’s adult population derives their livelihood from the sector. As a responsive financial partner that that seeks to equip and empower SMEs, we work with them to understand their challenges and priorities, to be able to provide them with appropriate financial solutions, targeted business support as well as training to facilitate their growth.
- Infrastructure & Green Solutions – Malawi requires substantial investment in energy, water, transport, and telecommunications infrastructure to facilitate economic growth and create opportunities for job creation and human development. We work with governments, development finance institutions and other commercial banks to finance large-scale infrastructure projects, addressing the country’s infrastructure gaps and enabling inclusive and sustainable industrialization. We partner with our clients to ensure environmental and social risks are appropriately managed and minimized.
- Trade and Investment - Malawi’s economic growth depends on the growth of intra-Africa trade, and enterprises’ ability to access global value chains. Being a member of the Standard Bank Group, we draw on our presence in major international markets and our strategic partnership with ICBC to facilitate trade flows within Africa and global markets with a particular focus on China, Africa’s largest trade partner. We provide a full suite of domestic and cross border trade solutions including supply chain finance, cross-border payments solutions, logistics support and matchmaking for importers and exporters.
Environmental
- Green Solutions and Green Banking – We support innovative green solutions to address environmental challenges and align our financing and services to environmental responsibilities. Protecting Natural Resources - Standard Bank is committed to investing in the environment as a way of unlocking and securing a sustainable, healthy, and ecologically friendly nation. Our forests and greenery nationwide are subject to deforestation with minimal efforts towards replenishing the vegetation we are quickly losing. These acts have lasting effects on our climate and the quality of life for coming generations. Being an Agriculture based economy with heavy reliance on rainfed agriculture for sustenance, trees are crucial to us sustaining our economy and the livelihoods of people. With a rise in the effects of Climate Change – it is within our agenda to support communities and Government in various reafforestation initiatives.
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