The times were easy when a bank's success was measured simply by how much money its employees made over the course of a year.

Net interest income, commission income, operating income according to valuation: what sounds strange to outsiders were clear benchmarks for assessing entrepreneurial success.

Manfred Koehler

Deputy head of the regional section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and editor in charge of the business magazine Metropol.

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Today that is no longer enough.

Of course, a credit institution should continue to generate high profits - but it should also pursue its business as environmentally friendly as possible.

The Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen now has Petra Sandner to achieve this goal.

She is the Chief Sustainability Officer and heads a team of three employees who are part of the corporate strategy.

Sandner's most important goal is to reduce CO2 consumption by 15 percent within four years.

She is happy to report that Helaba is already using 95 percent green electricity today, and that it was announced recently that only green paper would be procured.

But it's not done with that.

One of the plans to make the bank more environmentally friendly is also to deal with employee mobility.

Regulations on the question of which mode of transport should be chosen for which business trip or when business trips should be made at all do not yet exist.

Working from home reduces the ecological footprint

"We are working on it," says Sandner only on this topic.

However, it has already been clarified that half of the employees will be allowed to work at home even after the end of the pandemic.

This elegantly reduces the ecological footprint that the journey would create in case of doubt.

The realignment of Helaba also means that it no longer finances investments in nuclear power and lignite, which, however, is unlikely to result in any or only minor losses for business opportunities in Germany given the phasing out of both types of electricity generation.

In general, only investments that are sustainable should be financed if possible.

Or, as Sandner puts it, that lets the customer feel the “transformation idea”.

Borrowers are receptive to these considerations, she affirms;

the bank is also ready to advise customers in this regard.

All in all, it is about developing an instrument box with various ecological projects, explains Sandner. At the same time, she has an eye not only on the bank itself, but on the entire Helaba Group, which also includes Frankfurter Sparkasse, Landesbausparkasse and the small Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft. She put out her feelers everywhere, says Sandner.

She once trained as a hotel manager, then added a master's degree in international business administration, initially worked for Aareal-Bank, and has been with Helaba since 2008. Her tasks not only include improving the environmental balance sheet of the financial institution, she also deals with employee issues such as women in management positions and further training, as well as with the Group's social commitment. It is a broad field that she has to plow as Chief Sustainability Officer.