Sustainability Performance
Operations

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Our Sustainability Performance Across Five Strategic Pillars

Ismail Mokhtar

Operations

“Taking a holistic view of our operations, we are committed to minimising the environmental impact of our daily activities, with a comprehensive 3-year reduction plan. We’ve also made cybersecurity and business continuity top priorities, to boost resilience. A future area of focus for us will be measuring and managing the environmental impact of our suppliers. We look forward to enhancing our understanding of our supply chain, facilitate vendor ESG assessments and minimise the environmental impact of our suppliers.”

Ismail Mokhtar
Group Chief Operating Officer

Our Approach

At Bank ABC, we take a holistic view of our operations, aiming to minimise environmental impact of our day-to-day activities across carbon emissions, energy and water consumption and waste management, while enhancing organisational resilience. We also prioritise cybersecurity and business continuity as integral components of our operational strategy-critical not only to the resilience of our infrastructure, but also to maintaining the trust of our stakeholders and protecting our clients, employees, and systems.

Our Progress

With the recent launch of our three-year environmental initiative, we are targeting reduction efforts in six major operations - Bahrain, London, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Algeria. Together they comprise 88% of our Group’s energy usage, 92% of water consumption and 93% of the GHG emissions generated by water and energy consumption. 

The first phase targets Bahrain, London and Egypt, which collectively contribute 64% of the Group’s energy usage, 75% of water consumption, and 63% of our water and energy related emissions. The second phase, beginning in 2026, will capture the remaining three operations of Jordan, Tunisia and Algeria. We expect to start realising the benefits from reduced energy, water and GHG emissions in late 2025.

The inclusion of supplier emissions in 2023 marked a significant expansion of our reporting scope. In 2024, we further improved both the quality and coverage if our data - particularly across our Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt operations - capturing a broader range of water usage, waste and other data.

Looking ahead, we aim to further strengthen our insights through a spend-based methodology and better identify emission hotspots across purchased goods and services. This will enable more targeted supplier engagement and drive focussed emission reduction. 

Next Steps

Operations

While our three-year environmental reduction plan is currently underway, we are conscious that there is still a lot of work to do to address the full environmental impact of our operations. With this in mind, we are engaging with external specialists to identify further opportunities to reduce GHG emissions, energy consumption, water usage, and waste generation as well as to increase recycling and renewable energy sourcing.

At the same time, we acknowledge that further progress will depend on the continued development of enabling infrastructure across the MENA region, particularly in expanding access to renewable energy and waste recycling, including hazardous waste.

An additional area of focus is the strengthening of the incorporation of ESG risk into our global procurement process. As noted earlier, suppliers are a major contributor to our emissions, 44% of our Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions. In 2025, we aim to onboard a global procurement management system that will provide the necessary platform from which we can embed ESG risk into our vendors’ management process. Ultimately, this will allow us to better understand our supply chain, foster closer vendor engagement and reduce the environmental impact of our suppliers.

Initiatives

Develop environmental reduction plan for suppliers
  • Onboarding of a group-wide procurement system.
  • Supplier ESG engagement strategy to be developed.

Benefit:

  • Reduce environmental impact of our suppliers.
  • Ensure compliance with Bank’s Code of Conduct, Human Rights and Forced Labour.
  • Reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Operations

In 2025, we aim to onboard a global procurement management system that will provide the necessary platform from which we can incorporate ESG risk into our vendors’ management process.