Group Chief Executive's introduction

At a time when it has never been more important for banks to focus on the things that support their sustainability agenda, we have never faced so many distractions from doing so.

 

This, our ninth annual report on sustainability, covers our performance against the objectives we set for 2008, which was an extraordinary year for the global banking industry, and for Barclays. The financial and economic uncertainty of 2008 was profound. At a time when it has never been more important for banks to focus on the things that support their sustainability agenda, we have never faced so many distractions from doing so.

This time last year, I said sustainability was about building relationships and accepting responsibilities. That remains true, and 2008 turned the spotlight very brightly onto both areas.

As we look back at the events of the last eighteen months, it is important that the banking industry – Barclays included – acknowledges openly its share of responsibility for the current crisis. We have expressed regret for this publicly, to our customers and to our shareholders. How does this expression of shared responsibility fit into the context of sustainability?

Put at its simplest, sustainability for Barclays means playing our part in supporting the wellbeing of society. The wellbeing of society in the coming period will be fundamentally influenced by securing economic stability. We believe we can play an important role in the efforts to stabilise the economies in which we operate – particularly in the UK. So for example, in a year when credit was scarce, we increased lending to small and medium businesses in the UK by 6% and our market share of new mortgage lending rose from 8% to 36%.

I’m proud to say that in the toughest of years, when our people were under intense pressure, more of them found the time and energy to support the community causes they care about – more than 57,000 colleagues were involved in volunteering and fundraising (up from 44,000 in 2007).

Barclays presence in many communities across the world, as a profitable – and commercially sustainable – provider of financial services (and thereby economic vitality), and as a major employer, enables us to have a positive impact on those communities. Operating in many communities does create its own challenges, and we try to address these in this Report.

Let me turn to the structure of this Report. Our sustainability framework, which we put in place in 2008, focuses on five strategic themes which this Report is structured around.

For our customers and clients, we seek to work hard to meet their changing needs through development of relationships, innovation and enhanced service. Examples in 2008 included our increased lending in the UK and launching our debt repair line for customers facing financial difficulties in South Africa.

To foster inclusive banking, we try to extend the reach of banking services in developing countries and reduce financial exclusion in developed markets. What sort of initiatives did this prompt in 2008? We ran financial capability seminars for market traders in Ghana and we committed to support the UK charity Business Debt Line for a further three years.

To protect the environment, we seek to minimise our direct impacts and monitor and manage our indirect impacts. In 2008, we made our UK and European operations carbon neutral by offsetting operational emissions and we reduced energy use per employee by 2.1%. We are on track to make our global banking operations carbon neutral by the end of 2009.

To improve diversity, we recruit employees from the widest possible talent pools and reward them on performance and ability. The key focus of our diversity and inclusion strategy is gender, and in 2008, we increased the proportion of women in senior management to 25%, up from 21% in 2007.

And finally as a responsible global citizen, we manage our indirect economic, ethical, social and environmental impacts, invest in local communities, and encourage our suppliers to be more sustainable.

Against each of these five themes, we describe in this report further examples of our work in 2008. We are attempting to give a candid account of our progress, including where we have more to do. Throughout this Report, and our more detailed online Sustainability Report which you can find at www.barclays.com/sustainabilityreport, we show ways in which Barclays seeks to contribute to the societies and communities in which we work.

Looking forward, 2009 will be another tough year, but we will do all we can to justify the trust our customers and clients place in us every day when they choose to do business with Barclays.

The current circumstances are distracting, but they will pass. What will not change is our commitment to behaving responsibly, both in our core banking business and our wider sustainability agenda.

John Varley
Group Chief Executive