Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)

We aim to reduce carbon emissions from our own operations to net zero by 2030. And, to have 100% of our electricity come from renewable sources via our own renewable source and renewable energy certificates by 2030. We have established targets for electricity consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, paper consumption, and waste diversion. 

In 2022, we purchased renewable energy from a local electricity supplier, which is equivalent to around 30% of our annual electricity consumption for the year. Each unit in a renewable energy certificate represents electricity produced by local renewable sources, such as solar, wind and landfill gas. This helped to reduce around 3,408 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. Our efforts to support local renewable energy were recognised by the Renewable Energy Contribution Award in the Smart Energy Awards 2022. It is the fourth consecutive year that the Bank has received this recognition. 

Around HK$49million has been invested for office renovation to enhance space efficiency in our workplace with support of technology and hybrid work policy. More than 100,000 sq. ft of office area was reduced which could reduce over 100 tonnes of CO2 emission in our operation.

We support our community’s transition to a low carbon economy with sustainable finance solutions and ESG-focused investment choices.

Since 2018, Hang Seng has been offering sustainable financing to our corporate customers, including green loans to finance customers who are eligible for green projects and sustainability linked loans. This year, we introduced social loan programmes to provide financing to support our corporate customers’ social projects, e.g. an affordable basic infrastructure and access to essential services.

We have been practicing corporate social responsibility by investing more resources in our younger generation, help them to achieve shared goals.

We are developing young talents into banking professionals by offering internships across our businesses and functions. In 2022, 249 (+7% vs 2021) university students joined us in the various internship opportunities provided by the Hang Seng programmes, from which they acquired the practical experience and skills in banking.

We attach great importance to climate risk management. Adapting to the physical and transition risks and opportunities associated with climate change, we established a climate risk management framework that is aligned with our parent company HSBC, for identifying and mitigating such risks. Since 2021, we have incorporated climate risk considerations into our lending business. 

We continue to accelerate the development of our climate risk management capabilities. The key achievements in 2022 include:

• Developed new climate risk metrics to cover our retail mortgage portfolio in Hong Kong
• Enhanced our corporate transition questionnaire and scoring tool to clients in high transition risk sectors
• Development of our internal climate stress testing and scenarios capability, including model development and delivery regulatory climate stress tests.

We aim to earn recognition as an ESG leader from the community, investors and government bodies. 

For second year in a row, we continued to be the title-sponsor of the "2022 ESG and Green Finance Opportunities Forum" organised by the Chamber of Hong Kong Listed Companies. Over 200 business leaders and ESG experts gathered at the forum to discuss how to navigate climate risks and to finance climate actions that can support a more sustainable future.

We are enhancing our staff’s awareness and knowledge of ESG, so that they will be equipped to help us to progress in its ESG journey. In 2022, we organised two ESG webinars, in which industry experts shared how the development of ESG and fintech is affecting the market and us. For regular awareness programmes, we published ESG comics and newsletters to our staff on our corporate website. We also conducted interactive ESG mini-quizzes internally and received a total of 1,648 responses.

We have implemented the internationally recognised standards for ESG disclosure and we are the first local bank in Hong Kong to sign up as a supporter of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD). Our Environmental, Social and Governance Report 2022 has been prepared with reference to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards, and with reference to the standards for Commercial Banks set by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Boards (SASB) and the recommendations from the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The report has been independently verified by the Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency (HKQAA).

In 2022, we obtained Commendation Award for the Best GRI Report at the Hong Kong ESG Reporting Awards.