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Awards for Excellence 2016
Like digital innovation, demonstrating a commitment to corporate social responsibility is a relatively recent obligation in banking. So when social involvement has been at the heart of an institution’s identity for more than 100 years, it is hard to take a cynical stance and brand its efforts in the area as little more than a belated effort to manage its public image.
Social involvement at CaixaBank – which wins the award for best bank for corporate social responsibility – goes back its origins as la Caixa in 1904. Then it was a vehicle to promote pensions savings among the poor and insure workers against disability before the existence of a state social safety net. Today it has a steadily rising annual budget of €500 million for initiatives to counter poverty and social exclusion, protect the environment, promote arts and culture and widen access to education. It is one of biggest charitable foundations in the world and by far the biggest in Spain.
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CaixaBank HQ |
A good example of the foundation’s continued relevance – and in particular its work in projects that involve finance – is MicroBank. Its activities include offering self-employed people working capital; funding environmentally sustainable purchases; and funding in the agricultural sector for water efficiency, waste management, renewable energy and other schemes. Early in 2016, MicroBank established a new scheme to provide finance for master’s students studying in other European countries.
The group’s venture capital arm, Caixa Capital Risc, has also been involved in funding research in genetic and cardiovascular diseases and HIV. Caixa Capital Risc also launched CaixaImpulse with the la Caixa foundation in May. This is a project to provide training, expertise, mentoring and contacts – and up to €840,000 in financial support – to marketable and socially useful research in health and life sciences.
