Our Sustainable Approach to Banking

To ensure our approach to lending and investment reflects HSBC’s global business principles and values, sensitivity to society’s expectations and an assessment of risk, we have undertaken a number of global initiatives.

• From 2003 to 2007, we published five sector guidelines and policies to complement our Environmental Risk Standard published in 2002.
  • Forest Lands and Forest Products (PDF 206KB)
  • Freshwater Infrastructure (PDF 426KB)
  • Chemicals (PDF 41KB)
  • Energy (PDF 425KB)
  • Mining and Metals (PDF 40KB)
  • Environmental Risk Standard (PDF 9KB)
• We adopted the Equator Principles – a set of voluntary guidelines developed to address the environmental and social issues that arise in financing projects – in September 2003.
• We are looking to develop sustainability-focused business in a number of areas, particularly low carbon energy, water infrastructure, sustainable forestry and related agricultural commodities.