Credit only and exclusively for projects that are good for society or the environment. That is the objective of ethical banking, an initiative that began to be developed in Spain at the beginning of the last decade through Fiare Banca Etica and that is increasingly spreading throughout different communities such as Castilla y León, where it was held in May in Valladolid the general assembly of the largest ethical finance cooperative bank in Europe, and which already supports nine projects in six provinces of the Community “with a positive impact”.
Javier Mena, coordinator of the territorial initiative group of Fiare Banca Etica in Castilla y León, details that “the cornerstone” of this entity is that “great care is taken in the selection of loan clients and companies with a social and environmental impact positive”. To do this, each entity has a different protocol to select the ideas, “but in the end the most important thing is transparency, which is part of its philosophy, opens the doors and allows the information about the entities to which credit is given to be something accessible and everyone can consult it.
In the case of Fiare, the evaluation is made by people linked to the cooperative. “In the end, the legal form is a credit cooperative and there are people who voluntarily receive specific training on that process, with which they acquire some skills to see if they can move forward with a project. Questions of all kinds are analyzed, for example, the organization’s form of government, remuneration policy, waste management… There is a list and a whole series of items. Obviously you don’t have to have a grade of ten out of ten in all aspects, but it is generally evaluated if the project is going to be positive, “explains Mena.
The financing is carried out as in any bank with a financial intermediation task, when a client deposits his money and the loans are granted. “In ethical banking we attach great importance to social capital, which is what makes the bank grow,” says Mena, who clarifies that “the bank can give more credit by having savings from its customers, since due to legal regulations and financial regulation must have sufficient share capital to be able to support the credits’.
sectors
The sectors in which the entity works the most, both in Castilla y León and in other territories, are projects related to the environment and renewable energy, followed by social issues that include the inclusion of excluded people, and in third place, loans to individuals and public organizations.
In the specific case of Castilla y León, there are quite a few credits in the disability sector, social investments and in the environmental sector. One of the examples of this, as Javier Mena indicates, is the Crica cooperative. While in the Community the loans that have to do with public institutions are still pending, “a task that will be worked on in the coming years,” he advances.
ignorance
Mena acknowledges that these types of initiatives are still little known: “The approach of ethical banking is not to replace the traditional one, but rather to show that financial intervention can be carried out putting people and the planet first without giving up that this is a bank . It is not necessary to invest in weapons for the bank to work».
The entity is growing in a “sustained” way, that is, “around ten percent a year.” «Our objective is not to aspire to a big pitch, where we place the greatest emphasis is on investing in what we understand to be social transformation, after all, if the mission of a bank is to make money, the objective of ethical banking is perhaps social transformation”, he concludes.