Diamond Bank Group has introduced an Environmental and Social Risks Management System (ESRMS) in line with its commitments to its investors and institutional partners.
The ESRMS is a management system that aims to identify and limit potential societal risks relating to new investment proposals submitted to the bank. The purpose of the ESRMS is to prevent the bank from financing projects or activities that could have a significant negative social or environmental impact, which in turn could have subsequent repercussions in terms of financial or reputational risk.
The ESRMS includes :
- A policy on managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks ;
- A detailed procedure for managing ESG risks in all Diamond Bank subsidiaries ;
- A set of tools :
- An Excel spreadsheet for analysing and rating ESG risks ;
- An exclusion list for loan applications ;
- A report on the background to ESG risks in each country where Diamond Bank operates ;
- A list of sample legal clauses relating to measures to limit ESG risks to be included in contracts.
The ESRMS was designed in 2013 and piloted by Diamond Bank's Togo subsidiary in 2014.
The system has subsequently been rolled out in other subsidiaries following an assessment of this pilot carried out at the end of 2014.
To date, it has been implemented in the subsidiaries and branches in Bénin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Mali, Niger, Bénin, Chad and Togo. A second deployment phase is scheduled to take place by the end of June 2022 for the subsidiaries and branches in Guinea (Conakry), Guinea Bissau and Mauritania.