Focussing on impacts and transparency: award for KfW Sustainability Report

Distinction: KfW's 2015 sustainability report came third out of 79 in the "large enterprises" segment of this year's rankings awarded by the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) and the trade association "future - verantwortung unternehmen". The IÖW and "future" were especially impressed by the mechanism for gauging impacts and how they were described, in addition to the proactive way of handling of criticism, for instance concerning transparency in the use of funds.

Achieving impacts

The impacts achieved by KfW are clearly illustrated in the sustainability report by showcasing specific investments. One of these is a training factory supported by DEG at the Vietnamese-German University (VGU), near Ho Chi Minh City. At the factory, Vietnamese entrepreneurs learn how individual stages in production need to be coordinated along the value-added chain to ensure that resources are employed optimally – in terms of quality, the environment and manpower. DEG co-financed the investment with develoPPP.de-programme funds from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Monitoring impacts

The KfW Sustainability report also shows how the impacts achieved are calculated within KfW Group. To this end, DEG has been using its own corporate policy project rating ("Geschäftspolitische Projektrating, GPR") since 2002. This ranks financing on a points-based system. DEG calculates the anticipated effects of new commitments based on an on-site assessment. Furthermore, it collects information on the actually incurred effects for all commitments.

The ranking

The Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) and the trade association "future – verantwortung unternehmen" has been assessing sustainability reports of Germany companies and drawing up a ranking of the firms that report best since 1994. The main criteria include aspects such as company profile, corporate strategy and objectives, ecological issues, credibility and the quality of communications.