Climate protection, in an active way

Every year, we join the WWF Earth Hour initiative: we turn off the lights and disconnect electrical appliances for an hour on the last Saturday of March. But at our bank, Earth Hour is not just for 24 hours: in partnership with Treedom, we participate in creating a UniCredit forest of more than 90,000 trees and help reduce global CO₂ emissions by around 20,500 tonnes. As part of our group-wide initiative, we have planted trees in the Ócsa Nature Reserve with the involvement of our customers and the help of our volunteer colleagues.

Sustainable procurement

The volume of banking related purchases is also significant from a climate protection point of view. Therefore, we consistently ensure that we comply with social and ecological standards in our procurement. These are defined in the UniCredit Group-wide Supplier Certification guidelines. Our suppliers are expected to contribute to climate protection, use resources sparingly, avoid or reduce waste, comply with International Labour Organization (ILO) standards, and consider health and safety impacts throughout the supply chain.

Green business

As part of our banking activities, we offer a range of green financial services to our customers. We do this not only to make our own operations more sustainable, but also to serve our customers, who are interested in environmentally conscious and optimised operations.

With our green loans, we provide funding for projects or businesses that benefit the environment. These projects are often in the fields of renewable energy, sustainable housing or recycling.

With our green investment assets we encourage climate-smart investments. Green, environmental and climate issues affect all of us. UniCredit Bank is taking a number of initiatives to reduce its carbon footprint and contribute to a more sustainable environment. One of these is UniCredit's climate strategy, which aims to significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by our operations. At Group level, we have so far achieved a 60% reduction by 2020 compared to 2008 emissions, and aim a 100% reduction by 2050. In line with this commitment, our Group has joined the UN's Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA).

UniCredit Bank Hungary's green business efforts were recognised by the Central Bank of Hungary with the Green Bank Award 2023.

Engaging partners and customers

We encourage our partners and customers to reduce paper use at POS terminals by the means of a campaign. We remind our merchant partners with card acceptance terminals that it is not mandatory to print a sales copy when making bankcard purchases, so, before printing, they should ask customers if they really need it. We also encourage our customers not to ask for the receipt. We are convinced that all big changes start with small steps like these, and together we can do a lot to protect the environment by taking these small steps one by one.

Working in an environmentally conscious way

To reduce paper use, we have introduced digital and biometric signatures in our offices and branch networks, and our corporate customers can manage their banking documents online – quickly and securely – with our Digital Document Sharing service. This allows our customers to open accounts and launch electronic services through a digital process instead of a paper-based one. Where still necessary, we use FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified paper for the production of printed account statements and photocopying paper, printing stationery and envelopes.

Tree planting with the support of our colleagues and clients

UniCredit has joined the Hungarian Banking Association's Good Deed-Green Heart programme, which aims to raise awareness of human and natural values. Our company has been a participant in the programme since its launch in 2022. Initially, we planted 1 tree for each of our employees. This was followed by another sapling planted for each of our customers who were the fastest to switch from paper to electronic monthly statements in our customer campaign. The planting was carried out in the Landscape Protection Area of the Danube-Ipoly National Parks in Ócsa with the voluntary participation of our colleagues, who helped to save a special, centuries-old protected forest that is suffering from the effects of climate change.

Green solutions in our HQ

We are doing all we can to support our communities with the tools available for us Beside financial education or volunteering, we pay attention to our environment as well: we started to provide irrigation for the trees around our Szabadság HQ, together with District V. of Budapest, where our office is located. In the framework of the district's comprehensive renovation project, we decided to use the huge surface area of our building's roof to collect rainwater and channel it into a cistern on Arany János Street, hidden invisibly under the walkway, from where the almost 200 trees in the area are irrigated. The necessary system – with a throughput of 12–15m³/hour – has been installed and the connection to the cistern has been made. We also support the community in other ways: we've installed 27 bike racks on either side of the office building for our colleagues and people who work and live in the area to use.