Piraeus Bank has spent three years turning corporate responsibility from a scattering of individual initiatives into something governed, funded and measured. Since 2022, its Equall framework has organised the bank’s social work around four pillars – gender equality, children’s welfare, the new generation and vulnerable social groups – successfully taking the award for Europe’s best for corporate responsibility for the second year in a row.
The corporate responsibility unit reports directly to the chief executive. It has grown from two people managing four initiatives in 2022 to eight managing 34 in 2025.
The bank can also say exactly what that spending is worth. Since 2024, Piraeus has applied an internationally recognised social return on investment (SROI) methodology, and in 2025 its SROI ratio rose from 4.41 to 5.93 – meaning it estimates €5.93 ($6.77) of social value for every euro committed.
The spending behind the figure is substantial: €34.1 million invested during the year, equivalent to 6.1% of the bank’s total investment and 1.9% of operating income. Its 34 programmes, up from 26, reached 15,231 beneficiaries, or 150% of the annual social impact commitment against an initial goal of more than 10,300 people. More than 35,000 have been supported since Equall began.
Outcomes, not headcounts
What distinguishes the programme is that Piraeus tracks participants after they leave it. Under the gender equality pillar, 1,118 women were trained through Women Founders and Makers, Women Back to Work and Women in Agriculture initiatives, and 26% had found work or founded a company within a year. A further 1,232 women-led businesses received preferential pricing and terms, with €10.5 million of loans disbursed to them – corporate responsibility routed through the balance sheet rather than parked beside it.
Of 40 women supported after surviving gender-based violence, 52% found employment; of 90 refugee women trained as hotel employees and kitchen assistants through the Refugee Women Academy, 36% were in work within six months. Another 1,315 pupils, students and teachers were trained in the prevention of gender-based violence.
Working with the environment ministry, it invested €4.8 million in flood and erosion control. The bank says more than 1.1 million people benefitted directly
The new-generation pillar concentrated on skills and enterprise. The Piraeus Startup Accelerator trained 663 university students from Patras and Ioannina; of the 10 pre-startup teams it backed, half went on to establish a company, with €50,000 awarded to their founders.
Project Future trained 233 students for the labour market, 64% of whom were employed within a year. Teacher training multiplied the reach: 535 teachers were trained in generative AI tools under the auspices of the education ministry, and 1,358 under the Green Education Partnership, indirectly benefiting approximately 13,580 pupils.
Child protection produced the sort of evidence corporate responsibility programmes rarely capture. The Recognise – Protect initiative trained 3,400 kindergarten teachers to act proactively on child safeguarding. Work with vulnerable groups was smaller in scale but consistently followed up – 100 young people given vocational training, 52% of them employed within six months; 40 children and young people coached through Equall Hoops, the bank’s basketball programme for the autism spectrum, in Athens and Volos.
Piraeus also put money into infrastructure. Working with the environment ministry, it invested €4.8 million in flood and erosion control across the Parnitha, Penteli and Feneos forests, engaging local cooperatives that employed more than 140 forestry workers. The bank says more than 1.1 million people benefitted directly.
It also contributed €25 million to the Marietta Giannakou school infrastructure programme – a €100 million joint effort with Greece’s other systemic banks covering 431 school buildings – disbursed €4 million to cultural enterprises and reached more than 30,000 residents through urban interventions in Thessaloniki.
