HSBC was a major sponsor of the International Women’s Forum (IWF) Cornerstone Conference held from 20 to 22 May 2009, the second IWF conference held in Hong Kong since 1996. The conference, themed ‘World without Borders’, enabled about 400 business and community leaders from more than 30 countries and territories to exchange ideas and share best practice to facilitate public policy making and strategic planning for multinational corporations, NGOs, governments, and academic institutions around the world.
At the conference, Teresa Au, Head of Corporate Sustainability Asia Pacific Region for The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, shared HSBC’s sustainability best practice for tackling a variety of global environmental, educational and economic challenges, as well as ideas on managing risks and opportunities arising from those challenges. HSBC’s support of this forum also is in line with its focus on improving diversity in terms of gender, generation and ethnicity at leadership levels.
Examples of how HSBC integrates sustainability into its business model were given at the conference including:
1. HSBC understands that climate change is a global challenge and it is essential that we provide support to our clients to help them manage the risks as well as realise the opportunities. In Asia-Pacific, HSBC has taken steps to understand and meet the needs of our commercial customers. HSBC has developed pioneering products and services such as green equipment financing to assist our customers to become more eco-friendly in their operations, helping them meet new environmental regulations in the global and local context.
2. In helping to address poverty, HSBC also understands the importance of financial inclusion. In Hong Kong, HSBC has recently funded the set up of the first Social Enterprise Business Centre in Hong Kong to provide expert advice to help social entrepreneurs’ operate with sustainable business models, making a social contribution and benefiting disadvantaged groups in the long-term.
3. On the community investment side, HSBC focuses on education and the environment which, we believe, are fundamental to the development of sustainable communities (US$102 million globally). HSBC sponsors programmes to teach basic financial skills to children in 15 countries and territories to enable them to make wise decisions in how they spend and save their money.
D.C.