3.3 Sustainable Development Goals
Contents Foreword Management report Corporate governance
Consolidated Financial Statements
Company Financial Statements
Pillar 3
1.Strengthening innovativeness: Innovativeness is essential
both for an excellent customer focus and for building
a rock-solid bank. Innovation allows us to improve our own
services and respond rapidly to opportunities in the market.
In addition, innovation is essential to provide support with
regard to the strategic issues our customers face.
2. Empowered employees: Achieving the strategic objectives
will require a transformation into an organisation in which
there is scope for professionalism and entrepreneurship, with
a continual focus on development and training, employee
diversity and a good, learning corporate culture.
3. Better cooperative organisation: The new governance
structure will contribute to the transformation that our
organisation must go through to fulfil the strategy. This will
allow an organisation to emerge that is flexible for the future
and centres on maximum local entrepreneurship.
Strategy implementation
The Strategic Framework 2016-2020 has initiated a group-
wide transition process consisting of a wide range of change
initiatives that impact our organisation structure, the way
we work and the way we serve our customers. In addition
to many initiatives in the line organisation, several numbers
of large, strategic projects are also being implemented.
The strategic implementation agenda has been designed along
the four strategic pillars: complete customer focus, rock-solid
bank, meaningful cooperative and empowered employees.
The transition process is dynamic and can be adjusted based on
changing circumstances.
An integrated process for the coordination of the transition is
essential to ensure timely and coherent implementation of the
strategic goals. This process began in 2016 and will continue
in the coming years. Strategy implementation is facilitated by
a central oversight and coordination office for performance and
strategic initiatives, which reports frequently to the Executive
Board, Supervisory Board and supervisors. Processes have been
established to ensure short-cycle steering by the Executive
Board members in their respective domains, based on goals
that have been translated into concrete activities, KPIs and
clearly allocated responsibilities. This approach enables the line-
organisation to remain in the lead of the transition process.
Rabobank is a cooperative bank with deep social roots that
was established by and for entrepreneurial poor farmers.
Their response to the problems they faced at the time shows
surprising parallels with the global challenges we face now.
These days the scale of the problem is much greater, due to
the limited natural resources which the earth has available in
the face of rapidly growing global populations and increasing
inequality. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
drawn up by the United Nations are a clear benchmark for the
challenges we must solve together.
The goals were developed in 2015, in cooperation with
businesses, social organisations and other parties. It is a set of
goals to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity
for all as part of a new sustainable development agenda that
has to be achieved over the nxt 15 years. Rabobank helps
to achieve the SDGs by offering financial support, sharing
knowledge and connecting parties. We have embedded our
contribution to the SDGs in our strategic ambition because, as
a socially responsible bank, we feel a responsibility to take up
the challenge of making a meaningful contribution to achieving
the 17 goals. We have a direct impact on the SDGs by following
our Banking for Food and Banking for the Netherlands strategies
and the Sustainably Successful Together programme, as well as
indirectly through projects organised by Rabobank Foundation
and Rabo Development, for example.
The infographic below shows how we are working directly
towards reaching the goals. The goals to which we are making
a primary contribution are enlarged in the infographic, other
relevant SDGs are coloured in and the SDGs on which we have
limited impact are shown in grey.
Impact requires focus. Which is why we focus our activities
on the global challenges to which we can make the greatest
social contribution. For more information about our impact on
the SDGs, see appendix 5. As a leading food agri-bank in the
world, our highest priority is to work hard to achieve global
food security for the growing world population (SDG 2 Zero
Hunger). In future years production by both large and small
farmers must be increased sustainability and better distributed.
We are committed to investing in this.
In the Netherlands and in our global food agri-domain we
work hard to stimulate economic growth and decent work (SDG
8 Decent work and economic growth). In the coming years we
will further develop our role to become a financial linking pin.
This means that the main focus is not on the loan itself but on
working with the client to find the right form of funding and
the right network.
305 3. About Rabobank