Summary

The 2005/2006 Sustainability Report, which you are about to read, is the third report of our efforts to insert sustainability into society and our daily activities. In addition to reporting our progress and challenges of the past two years, this edition discusses our goals for 2007 and features a number of changes that make it even more accessible to our relationship groups.

The first change arose in December 2006 at a meeting with about 50 people representing customers, suppliers, employees, NGOs, government, academia and organisations which specialise in reports. The goal was to create a means for the interchange of opinions and experiences. This led to discussing the role of the financial services sector in the process of integrating sustainability, which forms part of the content of this Report. Finally, this year’s Report is available in several forms, as shown below.
 
Like a growing, uncontrollable whirlpool, sustainability continues to pull in everything around it, changing our way of doing business and impacting on our life styles.
The effects of this new way of thinking are seen at work, when we assess a financing operation for its impacts, or at home, when we choose to buy recyclable products or a refrigerator that consumes less energy.

At ABN AMRO REAL this movement is no different, and illustrates how sustainability has become a fundamental aspect of our business. Some departments became involved right at the beginning, while others came on board only recently. But this was to be expected: accelerating the process might have altered our people’s commitment level. We knew that the amount of time required to assimilate the idea of sustainability would depend on each individual.

This map shows the history of our journey and the growing involvement of our people and departments over time. The journey began in 1998 with the merger of ABN AMRO Bank and BANCO REAL, when a group of executives started engaging our people to move towards sustainability. Although this was the impetus that kick-started the movement, even today there are still staff members and entire departments which have yet to properly assimilate sustainability.

In response to the growth of the movement, in 2001 we created an Executive Directorate of Social Responsibility, which allowed sustainability to move out of our executive offices and spread to other floors and units of the Bank. In 2006 the newly-created Sustainability Board brought sustainability to the branches and a variety of business fronts. Other changes are even more evident, including the presence of the Innovation factor in all our departments and activities. Since the journey began, we have always chosen to involve people through their own conviction, and not by our imposition.
 
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