Sustainability

For the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (“the Group”) sustainability initiatives are an integral part of delivering the Group’s strategic priorities and creating value for shareholders.

• Our customer commitment.
• How we are managing our impact on the environment.
• Our culture and employee engagement initiatives.
• Our work in the Australian community.

We have a number of initiatives in place to:

• deliver cost-savings through eco-efficiency

• create an organisational culture that supports customer service excellence

• manage risks and identify new commercial opportunities associated with climate change and carbon trading

• build stronger relationships with the community

• create a workplace that attracts and retains the best people.

These activities are part of being a well-managed organisation committed to delivering long-term shareholder value.

Future Developments

The Group has identified five priority areas for sustainability that it plans to focus on in the coming year:

• Embedding sustainability into business processes, which includes an increased incorporation of environmental and social issues into management and decision making processes.
• Supporting diversity and financial wellbeing in the community by continuing the focus on financial literacy, and an increased focus on educational and employment opportunities for Indigenous Australians as part of the Reconciliation Action Plan.
• Helping customers to meet their sustainability goals by developing products and services to meet their evolving needs.
• Creating greener workplaces by setting a greenhouse gas reduction target, as well as addressing measurement and reporting of water and waste data.
• Continuing to build a culture of customer service excellence, with a focus on leadership, recruitment and reward to ensure culture is aligned with the Group’s goal of being Australia’s finest financial services organisation

   

Commitment to strengthening sustainability processes
The Group has engaged KPMG's Sustainability Advisory Services to provide advice to the Group on the processes underpinning the accuracy, completeness and consistency of the performance data results reported in the environment, people and customer tables in this section of the Group’s website; KPMG has not provided assurance on this data. Following recommendations made by KPMG, the Group is reviewing opportunities to strengthen current processes and practices for future sustainability reporting.