DOC 819/13 (Vers. 1.1.)
WSBI-ESBG Common CodeFinal Text
Retail, Regional, Responsible
As savings and retail banks of all sizes and legal forms, we play an essential role in providing the diversity crucial to maintain the stability of the financial system. We believe that preventing the concentration of economic and financial resources in the hands of the few is paramount to a financial system that serves the greatest possible number of people and businesses.
Financing the real economy is core to our identity. We safeguard deposits and put them to work through effective and responsible lending. Retail banking serves the variousfinancial needs of individuals, households, small and medium-sized businesses across all sectors, and local authorities –that is what makes it unique. We provide a broad range of retail products and services that improve the financial well-being of our customers.
We foster close, interactive relationships with the customers and communities we serve. We reach out to customersand use a wide range of easy-to-use channels to provide the services they need – whether they live in rural areas, the heart of a metropolis or anywhere in between. We also maintain a close, synergistic relationship with the community as a whole. We participate as responsible members of the community we serve, engaging in socially responsible endeavours that bring real benefit to society. We favour local decision-making and set the highest business and ethical standards.
We take a “double bottom line” approach to banking: we balance the need for financial sustainability and a return to society. We abide by fair and transparent corporate governance and nurture fair and clear relations with our customers. Promoting financial inclusion is part of our heritage and remains core to our mission today. We promote financial education policies and instruments to the communities we serve. We commit to becoming environment-friendly businesses that invest responsibly by integrating proper environmental, social, governance and ethical values into all of our financial analysis and decision-making. And we look after our own: we treat all our employees fairly and equally, with dignity and respect, and recognise their merit.Only in this way will our businesses endure.
Our values are common to savings and retail banks throughout our membership, and all members of ESBG are also members of WSBI.However, there are characteristics that are specific to each association:
WSBI brings together savings and retail banks from 90 countries, representing the interests of approximately 7,000 banks in all continents. As a global organisation, WSBI focuses on issues of global importance affecting the banking industry. It supports the aims of the G20 in achieving sustainable, inclusive and balanced growth and job creation around the world, whether in industrialised or less developed countries. WSBI favours an inclusive form of globalisation that is just and fair, supporting international efforts to advance financial access and financial usage for everyone. It supports a diversified range of financial services that responsibly meet customers' transaction, saving and borrowing needs. To these ends, WSBI recognises that there are always lessons to be learned from savings and retail banks from different environments and economic circumstances. It therefore fosters the exchange of experience and best practices among its members and supports their advancement as sound, well-governed and inclusive financial institutions.
ESBG brings together savings and retail banks of the European Union and European Economic Area that believe in a common identity for European policies. ESBG members support the development of a single market for Europe that adheres to the principle of subsidiarity, whereby the European Union only acts when individual Member States cannot sufficiently do so. Theybelieve that pluralism and diversity in the European banking sector safeguard the market against shocks that arise from time to time, whether caused by internal or external forces. Members seek to defend the European social and economic model that combines economic growth with high living standards and good working conditions. To these ends, ESBG members come together to agree on and promote common positions on relevant matters of a regulatory or supervisory nature.
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