Evaluation and Analysis of the Enterprise Umweltbank AG (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Business economics - Operations Research, grade: 95,5%, EBS European Business School gGmbH, language: English, abstract: Enterprises nowadays face unprecedented market demands concerning social responsibility. Especially society's environmental consciousness has increased tremendously in the past decades and particularly in recent years. Simultaneously, consumer's willingness to pay for social and ecologically friendly products and services has increased drastically. On the one hand, these changes in perception of environmental issues lead to challenges for businesses as they have to adapt their business model to trends in society. On the other hand, these changes provide opportunities for businesses.
In several industries, ecological products and services have been established by many businesses. Sustainability in the western world is omnipresent. Supermarkets for example offer a wide range of biological, sustainable products. Gas stations offer bio fuel. And fair trade green fashion has developed to an integral part of the fashion industry. At first sight, bank's products and services themselves do not pollute. Banks do not seem to cause any direct ecologically harmful emissions. However, on closer inspection, through their financing function banks play a key role in the protection of the environment. By financing certain projects, banks indirectly influence pollution . To minimize the environmental footprint, banks would need to interfere with the activities of their clients. That would mean declining credit requests from clients who want to carry out projects which are not sustainable. This approach is diametrically opposed to traditional bank's primary goal of profit maximization. Also, money cannot be qualified as either good or bad. It depends on what people invest in. As shown, neither banks nor their clients are solely responsible for the pollution of our environment. Both players must take action to contribute to the protection of the environment.
Umweltbank AG, as a player acting within the banking sector, addresses this problem from one side and provides society opportunities to tackle the problem from the other side as well by financing environmentally friendly projects. The bank tries to translate the problem of pollution into an opportunity by raising and exploiting societies consciousness regarding this topic. Due to the loss of confidence in the financial sector as a result of the global economic crisis, this approach of ethical banking appears to be very promising.