A new approach to impact reporting rolled out in Ghana with SCB
With just 10 years left to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs), increased private sector involvement is critical. Corporate involvement in positive economic, social and environmental impact needs to be conscious and deliberate, not incidental to business as usual.
This means bringing impact to the heart of the business and embedding it as a part of the core business strategy.
Standard Chartered is committed to ensuring that strategy and practice are aligned to the SDGs and to the Paris Climate Agreement. Meeting these commitments relies on an ability to understand and measure the impact of banking activities across a range of economic, social and environmental themes.
Genesis Analytics partnered with the global bank Standard Chartered to conceive and test a new approach to corporate impact that was piloted in Ghana.
The new approach:
- Shifts impact reporting from a collection of positive stories to a more balanced view where negatives and gaps are independently and honestly noted
- Uses a wider set of economic, social and environmental indicators than those of previous studies
- Builds in a strategic analysis of how impact can be improved
- Acknowledges that impact is a relative concept that depends on underlying needs and conditions of each market, and these are different in other parts of the world, and
- For the first time requires the participation of clients in gathering data to assess outcomes of lending.