"The entire financial industry has lost the confidence of the
people. How can we change the way we do things and gain it back?,"
asked university lecturer and journalist Jeroen Smit at the opening
of the "Bank of the Future" seminar. Over 300
professionals and social entrepreneurs gathered in Amsterdam to
discuss with 7 Dutch bank CEOs how their industry can become more
sustainable, responsible and value-adding.
In his speech, Peter Bakker, WBCSD
president and former CEO of TNT, pointed out that "we are facing
multiple crises at a time. Some of them have an immediate impact
like the economic recession, some are long-term like climate
change. One of our greatest challenges is youth unemployment which has already reached
over 50% in crisis-ridden nations like Spain. If we do not find an
answer to this soon, we will have a revolution at our very
doorsteps in 10 years."
Monetizing externalities
He argued that a solution will neither come top-down from
government regulators nor bottom-up from private activists. "Only
businesses have the knowledge, innovation skills and dynamic
capacities to tackle the most pressing issues of our generation.
What we need is principal-based leadership by companies that offer
radical transparency while engaging with all stakeholders - also
with the people from Occupy."
A first step is that enterprises start internalizing the costs
they create for their environment. "Clothing retailer PUMA, for
instance, created a Profit & Loss account which includes
Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Water Consumption. These are just
notional charges. Firms do not actually pay for them even though
society does. That is why we have to monetize them into actual
charges," Bakker explained.
Design thinking and co-creation
At the seminar itself, innovators had the chance to present projects that would enroot banks more into
society to 7 CEOs of Dutch financial players like ING, Rabobank and
Achmea. Common to all of them was a design thinking and co-creation
approach. Beyond finance, this has been of particular relevance in
education innovation initiatives like the Learning Lab.
Banks investing client money face many dilemmas, one of them
being the question of where their responsibility ends and when
customer risk choice starts. Ruud Schuurs from "The Different
Council" (Dutch: Raad van Anders) aims to empower both firms and
communities to tackle such dilemmas.
To implement "The Different Council", firms pose a question and
invite people from outside their organization to conduct a
research. The business itself facilitates and accompanies this
process while granting access to all information necessary.