"It is an extraordinarily pleasing announcement that we continue to earn our clients' trust for our way of developing solutions that help them manage their sustainability challenges. In this way, we contribute to the transition and to their competitiveness," says Hans Beyer, Chief Sustainability Officer.
Prospera's report, Sustainability Advisor 2023, is a compilation of the results from just over 30 customer surveys among around 1,900 companies and institutions in the Nordics that Prospera conducted during 2023. This includes broad surveys such as Corporate and Institutional Banking, as well as separate surveys for different product areas.
In all these surveys, customers also rate how good the banks are at supporting them with sustainability advice. The result of this question has then been totaled into an overall score.
SEB is ranked as number one in the Nordics with 1188 points (1243 points last year). SEB loses points among corporate customers but improves points among financial institutions. Overall, this means that SEB defends its first place in the corporate segment and strengthens its first place among financial institutions.
Looking at individual countries, SEB continues to be ranked number one in Sweden and Finland, but this year also rises to first place in Denmark. In Norway, SEB is ranked in a shared second place.
"It is especially gratifying to receive this recognition in a country like Denmark, which has taken so many steps forward with its investments in energy islands for offshore wind power and hydrogen production."
What is required to continue developing sustainability advisory services?
"It's about understanding the clients' situations and the ecosystems they operate in. As companies start to report according to CSRD*, sustainability becomes something that permeates all parts of their operations. We need to become even more insightful into how the development looks within each industry and how sustainability can be integrated into clients' business models," says Hans Beyer
*CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) is an EU directive on how companies should report sustainability information in their annual reports.