Following the announcement of its company purpose in June 2021, the French bank La Banque Postale (LBP) became a mission-led company. This makes the bank a perfect example of a changemaker. Boris Plantier from Qorus interviewed Vincent Menvielle, Marketing Director at La Banque Postale, to find out more about his vision for the bank and its future.
How do you envision the role of banks evolving to drive a positive future? What specific initiatives or strategies are you implementing to align with this vision?
Commercial banks are at the heart of our economy, through their financing and investing activities. They are acting as agents, basically lending and rewarding money for all stakeholders in the larger ecosystem. In my eyes, this role comes with a larger responsibility – that is to incite clients to do business in the right way when it comes to transitioning towards a positive future. One can choose to ignore or accept this new role, but banks are overall coming to terms with and converging towards this idea that they are instrumental in helping change our world. I personally certainly have conviction in it.
In order to do that, some of them are also joining forces, as can be seen with the creation of a number of alliances such as the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) towards which La Banque Postale contributes significantly today.
For a bank like us, as a subsidiary of the La Poste group, playing this role as part of the larger public financial sector is a natural endeavor, considering it has always been in our citizen-minded DNA to act with a view that goes well beyond financial profit and towards being a force for good.
Our commitment is now also at the heart of our company’s purpose, with social and environmental targets, as we have transitioned to being a purpose-driven company in 2022, one year following our landmark decision – a first in the industry – to end any financing to oil and gas business.
How are you incorporating environmental considerations into your business practices and product offerings?
Day after day, our objective is to bring tangible and measurable impact through our day-to-day activities. This will become even more real with the soon-to-come implementation of the CSRD directive for which we have set up joint teams of sustainability and strategy & finance professionals. These teams, together with product and marketing professionals, are holding the baton for now, but will soon pass it on to all other functions within the bank.
Also, the way we think about innovation has changed. In an industry that is very much mature and where differentiation is hard to achieve, the sustainability agenda is now both a necessity and a formidable opportunity for us to play a key role in the just transition.
Here are two concrete examples of responsible products:
• Last year, we launched our impact mortgage for retail clients, a first in the French banking industry. With impact mortgage, clients are rewarded with a bonus on their mortgage rate should they choose to improve the thermal performance of the house at the time they buy it. It also applies to other sustainability criteria such as social or geographical considerations.
Additional impact offers like this one will soon be released for our clients later this year and will further demonstrate our ability to match affordability for our clients with sustainability.
• For corporates, we have developed green loans that are refinanced by the issuance of green bonds. For example, one of our clients in the cement industry took out this type of loan in order to innovate with decarbonized cement. Today, 25% of LBP corporate loan issuance is green.
How does La Banque Postale support economic growth within the communities you serve?
LBP is uniquely positioned to serve economic growth within the communities. Firstly because it has a long tradition of financing the local public sector as a market leader in this segment. Secondly because LBP is the only bank that has a social agenda at its core.
We believe that every person can have a bank account or at least some form of banking solution: we achieve this through our public mission of providing free services to 1.4m clients who are among those most likely to be excluded from traditional banking (Mission d’Accessibilité Bancaire). We are talking here about people who may be refugees, inmates, people suffering from psychological disorders or illiteracy, and so on.
LBP is also very protective with its 1.6m clients subject to financial fragility, the largest base in the market. We provide a very specific tool to those clients, called l’Appui. Through l’Appui, LBP helps the most vulnerable clients avoid over-indebtedness and find financial aid such as micro credit and cheap day-to-day banking solutions.
Can you provide examples of programs or partnerships that have been particularly successful in improving financial inclusion or financial health?
Today we work on all fronts with renowned partners. Our Club de l’Initiative, created in 2012, each month puts many non-profit organizations – such as ATD Quart Monde, La Croix Rouge, Secours Populaire and others – in contact with the neediest among our clients to address their primary unmet needs: 25 renowned associations fighting together with us against financial exclusion in all forms (housing, food, energy, literacy, digital inclusion, etc.). I personally take great pride in gathering these associations on a regular basis to work with us on the social agenda.
We also work closely with WWF as they supervise our work on the Global Impact Index, the overall sustainability proprietary score that rates our offerings such as the impact mortgage. They are also represented in our Mission Committee.
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And what about within your company? How are you fostering a culture of wellness and support for all employees in the workplace?
Playing an active role in transitioning to a better world cannot be achieved with a workforce that doesn’t have a sense of well-being and belonging. We at LBP believe we have a special mission and we have therefore put our colleagues at the heart of everything we do. We have colleagues mentoring sponsored students at l’Envol (our foundation dedicated to school support), and doing full or part-time professional stints with non-profit associations. Moreover, we ensure diversity and inclusion in all of our governance and more broadly whatever we do.
Is there anything we haven't talked about that you think is important to address?
Sustainability has for a long time mostly been seen as a reputation issue for corporates of all sizes and shapes. Today, it is rapidly moving into the business arena as a key component of doing business, even pushing companies to some necessary tradeoffs between profitability and sustainability. As a long-standing industry, playing a key role in the economy, banks are uniquely positioned to show the way and reinvent themselves at the same time.
