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Stakeholder Council
The most important communication format for us is the annual Stakeholder Council, in which various stakeholder
groups enter into dialog with representatives of our Management Board and management. The goals of the
event are dialog and knowledge transfer, informing the participants about progress achieved, discussing possible
actions and jointly considering and dealing with current sustainability questions.
Of the suggestions from the Stakeholder Council in 2017, the following points were prioritized and implemented
in 2018:
• The recommendation of the stakeholders that strict lending criteria and policies be implemented has already
been realized for some sectors and is continuing with the enhancement of existing policies.
• The suggestion that an RBI green bond be issued was taken up. The first benchmark issue of a green bond by
an Austrian bank took place in late June 2018 (see also page 35 and 75).
• The climate strategy formulated in 2017 was pursued as recommended by the stakeholders.
• In 2018, we remained committed to communicating the environmental measures adopted, both internally and
externally.
• Numerous measures were adopted with regard to SDG 5 on gender equality (see page 97 onwards). We
are increasingly focusing on directly addressing the personnel-relevant processes. We are currently working
with an external organization to perform a detailed analysis of the personnel structure and recruitment and
promotion practices. As recommended by the stakeholders, all of this is intended to sustainably change the
relevant structures in order to have a positive impact when it comes to gender equality.
The 9th RBI Stakeholder Council on November 20, 2018 was attended by over 90 people
from various stakeholder groups (customers and business partners, employees and owners, and
representatives from the financial world and rating agencies, education and research, special
interest groups, media, politics and administration, NGOs and NPOs).
CEO Johann Strobl welcomed the participants and thanked them for coming, as well as for the time they
have invested in the RBI topics. This time, the Stakeholder Council specifically addressed the question of how
digitization can help RBI to operate even more sustainably in the future. Strobl also stressed that the annual
Stakeholder Council is an important and established dialog format and highlighted the central role played by
society‘s expectations of the company.
Andrea Sihn-Weber, Head of RBI Group Sustainability Management, presented the latest developments in
sustainability management. She discussed the economic contribution made by RBI in Austria with reference to
results of the new value added report. She also reported on the victory achieved by RBI’s Sustainability Report
at the Austrian Sustainability Reporting Award.
Raiffeisen Bank International | Sustainability Report 2018
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Stakeholder Council 2018 A. Sihn-Weber, H. Cizek, Prof. R. Schmidpeter, CEO J. Strobl Inputs by COO A. Gschwenter