During 2019, we made the active decision to put sustainability at the heart of our business strategy and operations. To deliver on this, we ensured and appointed ownership throughout the organisation, including members of the executive management team. This was made through a process designed to achieve close interaction and input from a large number of internal stakeholders across markets and functions. The process allowed us to align our views and priorities around sustainability and to visualize why it is an essential part of our purpose. The result is an improved, more robust sustainability strategy, with goals and measurable indicators as well as a strengthened governance model of the sustainability area.
I’m proud to say that we at Hoist Finance put our customers and employees first and have made them the key drivers of our sustainability strategy. It is in the social aspects where Hoist Finance can make the most significant impact on people’s lives and society at large.
Our major negative environmental footprint is the large number of letters we send out to our customers each year: approximately 10 million letters* per year and growing. A new target in the strategy is to reduce our total paper consumption, by making the shift over to digital communication whenever possible.
* Excluding BeNe, Italy and Spain.
Our customers and employees are the main drivers of our sustainability strategy. We are deeply committed to understanding our customers' needs and we will develop new services that will support them in re-entering the financial ecosystem, as well as take preventative measures and work with financial education in different ways.
Our work within governance is closely linked to human rights and the right to privacy and integrity. Here, we work diligently with protecting both customer and employee integrity and have a network of Data Protection Officers, throughout the company to ensure we comply with GDPR and similar regulations.