CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

During the first half of 2005, the BBVA group’s commitment to corporate social responsibility –an integral commitment including all its stakeholders– has continued to pick up pace. External acknowledgement of its progress is given in the listing of BBVA on the two main sustainability benchmarks used on the stock exchanges: the Dow Jones Sustainability and FTSE4Good indices.

Amongst the numerous initiatives rolled out during the first six months of this year, we can highlight all the efforts put into publicly disseminating the group’s Code of Conduct and the publication of the 2004 Annual Report on Social Corporate Responsibility, the third such report the bank has published, on the occasion of its shareholders meeting. As happened last year, this report was awarded the highest rating (“in accordance”) from Global Reporting Initiative, a UN-sponsored body that publishes the most widely accepted guidelines on SCR reporting criteria world-wide. Only one other financial institution in the world apart from BBVA has earned this rating (a Canadian bank).

Within this over-arching commitment, the consolidation of a business strategy giving priority focus to sectors traditionally neglected by the finance industry merits special mention. This is being implemented both in the Americas (for immigrants, micro-firms and other low-income brackets) and in Spain (Dinero Express), accompanied by a social-action line channelled through free loans for basic household needs.

Apart from all this, the group and its foundations (in Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela) have continued intense deployment of support for local communities. Over the six months of this year their genuine “passion for society” has generated numerous manifestations, particularly significant in the fields of aid to families, humanitarian causes, culture, education, research and the environment. One aspect of this last-mentioned interest is the environmentally-friendly vocation of Anida, the group's property developer. Under the slogan "Passion for life", it publicly declared its commitment to earmark 0.7% of its earnings for projects to improve the environment. 

BBVA is also rolling out an ambitious corporate programme, “Passion for People”, which firmly locates people in the centre of its interests. In this sense, it focuses on three groups:  customers, management team and employees. This project has begun to be implemented in all countries where the group operates, through different plans intended to improve customer experiences, enhance relations between different business units and make the life of group employees more pleasant.