The 'Tic Tac Toe' Plan takes its Spanish name --Three in a Row-- from its main objective: the sustainable management of economic, social and environmental factors, aligned with the business. Bankinter's aspiration with this plan is to become established as a model for sustainability within the financial sector and to increase the generation of shared value with its stakeholders.
The action framework for the 'Tic Tac Toe' Plan is the Bankinter Sustainability Policy published in 2012, for which the Sustainability Committee ensures compliance. This committee is chaired by the institution's president and it meets at least every four months. The Steering Committee is regularly notified of advances in the strategic lines of the plan. Its organisation ensures the continuous improvement of its performance by developing a management system that details the guidelines from the international ISO 26000 manual and the Spanish standard SGE21 by Forética.
The 'Tic Tac Toe' Plan was designed after an analysis of the most significant changes experienced in the environment, and the identification of three crises –economic, social and environmental– as a result of the transformation of the economic model, a social change due to the investment of the demographic pyramid and the climate change phenomenon. Starting from that analysis, a battery of actions were defined, considered from a threefold perspective:
Economic. Considers the Enterprise Programme, which promotes and supports the most innovative entrepreneurial projects, and income tax with the incorporation of ESG criteria (environmental, social and good governance) in bank investment and financing policies.
Social. Channelled via the ‘A Bank for Everyone’ project, whose aim is to make Bankinter an inclusive company that is accessible to all people, regardless of their capacities.
Environment. The objective is to implement measures aimed at reducing the ecological footprint caused directly and indirectly by its activity.
These actions must also be founded on four core areas:
Quality, understood as bank personnels' commitment to excellence in the provision of service that is customised to customers' financial needs.
Management systems, in so far as they are tools for the continuous improvement of economic, social and environmental performance, audited externally and certified according to internationally recognised standards.
The involvement of its strategic stakeholder groups: customers, suppliers, third sector and, especially, employees, via corporate training and volunteering programmes.
The use of the best available technologies and the most innovative solutions, which are the bank's identifying traits.
The most relevant indicators of 2015 were:
Bankinter has identified the relevant factors of its activities to manage sustainability, in accordance with the directives established by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), an international association that promotes the use of sustainability reports to promote sustainable practices at organisations.
The identification of the relevant aspects of Bankinter's activities is done via what is known as a materiality analysis. This dynamic process lets us find out about the changes taking place in the surrounding area and in the expectations of different stakeholders, as well as to prioritise its efforts on those topics and areas that generate greater value for everyone, both internally and externally.
The methodology of the materiality analysis starts with the bank's value chain and regular dialogue with its stakeholders. Both variables provide the company with information on significant issues that must be taken into account for their economic, social and environmental management.
The primary dialogue mechanism Bankinter uses to this end are:
After significant sector issues are identified, they are prioritised according to the importance they have been assigned by the main analysts on sustainability and social and sector opinion leaders. Bankinter plans its action by taking these results into account and comparing them to the internal analysis conducted by the bank areas that are most directly involved in dialogue with stakeholders.
The result of this process is the materiality matrix, which graphically organises factors of the bank's business according to two criteria: the importance given it in the sector and its degree of maturity at Bankinter, namely its development within the organisation.
The current materiality analysis was performed in 2014. An update is planned for 2016. Nonetheless, just as explained in the section defining the 2016-2020 Sustainability Plan, stakeholders have been consulted on different matters to define the new strategic lines and their associated programmes.
