Compiled by WWF and BankTrack, the report, Shaping the Future of Sustainable Finance: Moving the Banking Sector from Promises to Performance, ranked 39 international banks on 13 ethical areas, ranging from biodiversity protection to human rights policy. It found that, while there appears to be a growing commitment to sustainable banking in the international community, a lot more work needed to be done.

A major area of concern uncovered by the report was the ongoing issue of transparency, with a near total lack of publicly available information. Robert Napier, WWF-UK chief executive, said: “The lack of transparent policies can not only result in over-exploitation of environmental goods such as fisheries and forests but also in increased financial risk to the banks, resulting in transactions being jeopardised.”

Of further concern, of the 39 banks surveyed, only two cases were identified where bank policies met all or most of the relevant international standards or best practices for sustainability, and the vast majority of banks had no human rights guidelines.

The ultimate conclusion of the report was that “at this point, policy development is still too embryonic, and information about implementation too guarded, for us to determine whether the banking industry has crossed the threshold into a promising new era of green finance – or merely refined the discredited old tools of ‘greenwash’”.

The full report can be downloaded from the BankTrack website. Visit www.banktrack.org