Analysis of Sustainability Strategies: Westpac Bank's Approach

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Westpac Bank's sustainability strategies, evaluating its current practices and recommending improvements. The report begins by identifying significant developments in sustainability reporting, such as the emphasis on sustainability data exchange and the advancement of corporate reporting on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It then examines Westpac's existing strategies, which encompass societal improvements, environmental solutions, and strategies for a better financial future, as outlined in the bank's annual report. The report assesses these strategies in light of the identified reporting trends. Finally, it offers specific recommendations for Westpac to enhance its sustainability performance, including strategies for societal change, environmental solutions, and financial futures, aiming to align with stakeholder expectations and promote long-term business success. The report references various academic sources and Westpac's annual reports to support its findings and recommendations.

Running head: SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PLANNING AND STRATEGY
Sustainable Business Planning and Strategy
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:
Course ID:

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction:................................................................................................................................2
2. Most significant current or expected developments in sustainability reporting:.........................2
3. Sustainability strategies at Westpac:...........................................................................................4
4. Recommended Sustainability Strategies at Westpac:..................................................................7
5. Conclusion:..................................................................................................................................8
References:......................................................................................................................................9

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1. Introduction:
Sustainability planning takes into account the actions that an organisation undertakes in
maximising its chances to survive and thrive in the market irrespective of the future
uncertainties. Thus, it is a complete process, which an organisation undertakes on in a span of
over several months (Baumgartner 2014). The current assignment aims to identify as well as
evaluate the most considerable recent or expected developments in sustainability reporting in
Australia. After such evaluation, the sustainability strategies at Westpac have been assessed to
find out whether the bank has adopted such identified developments to improve its overall
sustainability reporting. The final segment of the assignment sheds light on suggesting some
sustainability strategies for the bank that would help in improving its overall business
performance in the eyes of its stakeholders in future (Neugebauer, Figge and Hahn 2016).
2. Most significant current or expected developments in sustainability reporting:
There are numerous existing or expected developments in the global including Australian
sustainability reporting strategy, out of which two of the most significant strategies are discussed
as follows:
Sustainability data exchange:
The “Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)” has published the upcoming era of corporate
disclosure in the form of responsible, interactive and digital disclosures through a digital
publication. This depicts an overview of the future sustainability reporting and disclosure
(Iasplus.com 2017). As per GRI, the future would take into account new formats with the firms,
as they are needed to shift from annual reports to sustainability data exchange. The concentration

3SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PLANNING AND STRATEGY
would be to focus on the primary challenges like human rights and climate change. It has been
observed that GRI is involved in producing articles, videos and analysis papers throughout 2015
by interviewing with the business executives and other professionals belonging to different fields
and industries and this reporting format is expected to be initiated by the end of 2025 (Lozano
2015).
During this period, the organisations and the investors would include the critical
sustainability information into the utmost core of their processes of decision-making and
definition of strategy. Moreover, the organisations are needed to make additional disclosures
about the impact on society and the global natural resources. The stakeholders would find the
access to the information about business performance from diverse sources (Benn, Dunphy and
Griffiths 2014). Thus, this existing development would be of immense value for the stakeholders,
as they could dissect the value creation of the organisations in a more effective and broader
manner.
Advancement of corporate reporting on sustainable development goals:
The collaboration of the GRI and the United Nations Global Compact has initiated “SDG
Leadership through Reporting”. This has been a new initiative in advancing and promoting the
corporate reporting on sustainable development goals. The two organisations would work in
partnership for creating a list of disclosures in order to track business contributions to the SDGs
and a publication would be released on the reporting pertaining to SDG (Orsato et al. 2015).
Both the organisations would penetrate into their respective networks for developing
multi-stakeholder working groups that take into account leading businesses, reporting experts
and data users that would work to modify corporate reporting on SDGs. In addition, these

4SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PLANNING AND STRATEGY
organisations would form partnership with “Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)” for
enhancing the value of disclosures related to corporate sustainability (Neugebauer, Figge and
Hahn 2016).
3. Sustainability strategies at Westpac:
According to the sustainability strategy evaluated from the annual report of Westpac, the
bank has created a five-year sustainability strategy with three measurable objectives across three
broad priority areas (annualreport.westpacgroup.com.au 2017). These objectives take into
account the following:
Improving the lifestyle of the society and the people:
In order to make this strategy a success, Westpac has been involved in partnership with
Career Seekers for facilitating paid internships for the refugees and asylum-seekers like mid-
career professionals or students. In addition, it has developed a new technique of enabling the
culturally diverse customers to gain an insight of the products and services through a statement
of product disclosure using more images and diagrams. This matches with the expected
development of sustainability data exchange, as Westpac has developed new formats to make
additional disclosures to the customers about its products (Christ, Burritt and Varsei 2017).

5SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PLANNING AND STRATEGY
Figure 1: Contribution of Westpac to the society and individuals
(Source: 2016annualreport.westpacgroup.com.au 2017)
Environmental solutions:
Westpac has managed to raise $500 million through the Westpac Climate Bond Issue.
The funds accumulated have been distributed to five carbon commercial properties and seven
wind energy facilities in compliance with the “Climate Bonds Standard (v1)”. Moreover, the
bank has participated to support transition of a clean energy future (Dasgupta and Vaghela
2015). For instance, it has raised the percentage of renewable energy financing from 45% to 59%
in the portfolio of overall electricity generation since 2011. Furthermore, it has formed a new
program of energy efficiency for its business customers.
Verdia, a well-known energy specialist in Australia, has provided assistance to the bank
in this program as well. The intention is to provide the business customers with an overview of
identifying, funding and installing equipment for enhancing the energy efficiency of their
businesses (Epstein and Buhovac 2014). These initiatives match with the sustainability data
exchange related to climate change, as Westpac is involved in financing businesses to adopt
environmental-friendly solutions.

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Figure 2: Contribution of Westpac to the environmental concerns
(Source: 2016annualreport.westpacgroup.com.au 2017)
Better financial future:
Westpac has initiated Wealth Review for BT Financial Group in order to help them in
obtaining an insight of its financial position and the necessities to accomplish the financial
objectives. Moreover, it has launched CashNav, an application for the Kiwi customers in
managing spending by automatic categorisation of banking transactions into needs and notifying
customers about their spending (Dumay 2016). Furthermore, it has released Financial Inclusion
Action Plan in 2016 for enhancing financial access and resilience to fund the individuals going
through financial hardship. Thus, it has created additional disclosures in its sustainability
performance report about the advancement of corporate reporting on sustainable development
goals. However, it has not involved the data users to involve in corporate reporting and thus, this
advancement has only been partially achieved (Klettner, Clarke and Boersma 2014).
Figure 3: Contribution of Westpac to enhance financial future
(Source: 2016annualreport.westpacgroup.com.au 2017)

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4. Recommended Sustainability Strategies at Westpac:
This segment of the assignment sheds light on suggesting some sustainability strategies
for the bank that would help in improving its overall business performance in the eyes of its
stakeholders in future. Such recommendations are explained below:
 Maintaining societal change through analysing the future requirements of aging and
culturally diverse consumers is one of the effective sustainability strategies of Westpac
Bank. Considering such strategy, the bank focuses on developing services and financial
products that supports financial wellbeing increase. The bank should also focus on
analysing the physical, market along with regulatory effects of climate change.
 Effective financial futures strategies are to be developed by Westpac bank in order to
offer solutions that can facilitate consumers for adapting with environmental challenges.
Considering such strategy the company will consider launching important services or
products that can facilitate to respond to several pressures arising from the environmental
challenges.
 Environmental solutions are also recommended for Westpac bank that is focussed on
decreasing environmental footprint. The bank must consider offering a range of advice
related solutions based on the ways in which consumers might prefer advancing by the
banks advice along with private bank businesses.
 In order to attain sustenance financial futures serves as a different challenge for Westpac
bank. Geography and poor infrastructure of the region along with maintaining sustenance
livelihoods is resulting in difficult financial inclusion of people. For such reasons,
strategy of Westpac Company must be focused on offering access to affordable and basic
banking to all its target consumers among which 50% will be women. Moreover, the

8SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PLANNING AND STRATEGY
bank’s strategy must be maintaining a combination of basic choice account, “in-store
banking” along with developing a new model of financial literacy model.
5. Conclusion:
The current assignment intended to identify as well as evaluate the most considerable
recent or expected developments in sustainability reporting in Australia. After such evaluation,
the sustainability strategies at Westpac have been assessed to find out whether the bank has
adopted such identified developments to improve its overall sustainability reporting. It was
gathered that as per GRI, the future would take into account new formats with the firms, as they
are needed to shift from annual reports to sustainability data exchange. The concentration would
be to focus on the primary challenges like human rights and climate change.
It was also gathered that in order to make this strategy a success, Westpac has been
involved in partnership with Career Seekers for facilitating paid internships for the refugees and
asylum-seekers like mid-career professionals or students. In addition, it has developed a new
technique of enabling the culturally diverse customers to gain an insight of the products and
services through a statement of product disclosure using more images and diagrams. This
matches with the expected development of sustainability data exchange, as Westpac has
developed new formats to make additional disclosures to the customers about its products.

9SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PLANNING AND STRATEGY
References:
Annualreport.westpacgroup.com.au. (2017). [online] Available at:
https://2016annualreport.westpacgroup.com.au/ [Accessed 28 Aug. 2017].
Baumgartner, R.J., 2014. Managing corporate sustainability and CSR: A conceptual framework
combining values, strategies and instruments contributing to sustainable
development. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 21(5),
pp.258-271.
Benn, S., Dunphy, D. and Griffiths, A., 2014. Organizational change for corporate
sustainability. Routledge.
Christ, K.L., Burritt, R.L. and Varsei, M., 2017. Coopetition as a Potential Strategy for Corporate
Sustainability. Business Strategy and the Environment.
Dasgupta, M. and Vaghela, D., 2015. Integrating Organization Culture with Corporate
Sustainability Strategy: A Review.
Dumay, J., 2016. A critical reflection on the future of intellectual capital: from reporting to
disclosure. Journal of Intellectual capital, 17(1), pp.168-184.
Epstein, M.J. and Buhovac, A.R., 2014. Making sustainability work: Best practices in managing
and measuring corporate social, environmental, and economic impacts. Berrett-Koehler
Publishers.
Iasplus.com. (2017). Recent sustainability reporting developments. [online] Available at:
https://www.iasplus.com/en/news/2016/03/sustainability [Accessed 28 Aug. 2017].

10SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS PLANNING AND STRATEGY
Klettner, A., Clarke, T. and Boersma, M., 2014. The governance of corporate sustainability:
Empirical insights into the development, leadership and implementation of responsible
business strategy. Journal of Business Ethics, 122(1), pp.145-165.
Lozano, R., 2015. A holistic perspective on corporate sustainability drivers. Corporate Social
Responsibility and Environmental Management, 22(1), pp.32-44.
Neugebauer, F., Figge, F. and Hahn, T., 2016. Planned or emergent strategy making? Exploring
the formation of corporate sustainability strategies. Business strategy and the
environment, 25(5), pp.323-336.
Orsato, R.J., Garcia, A., Mendes-Da-Silva, W., Simonetti, R. and Monzoni, M., 2015.
Sustainability indexes: why join in? A study of the ‘Corporate Sustainability Index
(ISE)’in Brazil. Journal of Cleaner Production, 96, pp.161-170.