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Citigroup approaches sustainable technology as it would a CRM project-the more holistic and cross functional, the better. "In 2007-2008, green IT was thought by many people to mean reducing data center power consumption," says Michelle Erickson, the bank's sustainable technology director. "We prefer the term 'sustainable IT' as we have a larger vision than just cutting power usage."
April 1 -
$20 billion is a lot of green-andto date Bank of America has invested nearly $6 billion of its $20-billion ten-year initiative to address climate change. To be sure, much of the funds will flow to lending and investing strategies, and new financial products and services, but there are notable gains being made in operations and technology as well.
April 1 -
Johnson Financial Group's headquarters take up a square city block in busy downtown Racine, Wis. An impressive structure of concrete and glass, it is built on a spot where once stood abandoned homes so dilapidated that their roofs had long since crumbled into their basements. Constructing the bank's new home required thousands of square yards of rubble to be carted away. Instead of moving the junk to a landfill, where it would degrade for generations, Johnson Financial hauled the majority of the debris away for recycling.
April 1 -
First National Bank of Omaha becamethe first bank to build a data center powered entirely by fuel cell technology in 1999, but the $19 billion bank hasn't just rested on its green laurels since then. The bank is in the process of virtualizing its 8,000 desktop PCs, replacing them with more energy efficient terminals that also have double the lifespan of traditional PCs-longer lifespan equals less electronic waste. A server virtualization project cut energy usage, cooling costs, allowed the bank to decrease the time it takes to build a server from one week to half a day, and reduced disaster recovery demands significantly. On the operations side, motion sensitive lighting, sinks and flush devices are becoming the norm as facilities are upgraded. Recycling efforts resulted in more than 350 tons of paper recycled in 2008, a figure the bank translates to the equivalent of 6,236 trees. FNBO is also continuously greening its customer-facing initiatives, in part through its www.bankgreentoday.com Website. The latest effort? The quarterly, full color, high-gloss newsletter that it used to send to 120,000 households manually is going digital, and by next year will only be produced in electronic format.
April 1 -
As if preparing for a triathlon, New Resource Bank's quest for energy agility has resulted in an exhaustive plan that's enrolled executives, employees, customers, equipment, hardware and software in a green fitness club.
April 1 -
The future for Third Federal Bankis one in which old school movement falls out of fashion.
April 1
They look to be straight out of Star Trek's Enterprise, but Citigroup's telepresence centers bring executives from Hong Kong, London, New York and Mexico face to face at a moment's notice, and helped the bank reduce carbon emissions from business air travel by 31 percent from 2008 to 2009.
That's an impressive number, and a small part of why Citi topped the Money Center category in BTN's first ranking of America's Greenest Banks.
The ranking recognizes that just as there are endless shades of green, sustainability policies and programs can be measured many ways: Carbon footprints, energy costs, paper recycled or bills not sent, telecommuting hours supported, environmental practices of portfolio companies.
For banks, "green" efforts can be sorted into three buckets: the companies they lend and grant credit to, the types of products they offer retail customers, and their internal operations and technology initiatives.
It's fair, and gratifying, to say that all three of these buckets have grown substantially over the past decade. Many banks have signed The Equator Principles and The Carbon Principles, which set project finance and lending standards based on environmental sustainability. Many in the industry have created "green" accounts that emphasize electronic document delivery. And with an intense focus on efficiency, banks have undertaken a variety of energy conservation projects, from virtualization to alternative energy. At most banks, even the Great Recession hasn't taken their eyes off the ball of environmental sustainability. "The banking sector was moving very aggressively towards a sustainability-focused strategy prior to the global recession," says Chris Park, national practice leader for Deloitte's sustainability practice. "What's happened is not so much a change in focus, but a change in visibility."
With this issue, and marking the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, BTN expands its monthly "Going Green" section to recognize "America's Greenest Banks." The aim is to give due recognition to the banks that are pace-setters in their peer group when it comes to environmentally responsible technology and operations initiatives. This year they are: Citigroup, Bank of America, Johnson Financial Group, First National Bank of Omaha, New Resource Bank and 3rd Federal. On the following pages you'll find the highlights of each bank's "green" story, and hopefully inspiration to write your own.
Methodology
The ranking began with a national call for entries in which banks voluntary outlined their environmental initiatives. This data was supplemented (when available) with research from risk management consultancy Risk Metrics. BTN's selection criteria focused narrowly on sustainability initiatives driven by banks' technology and operations divisions with measurable ROI and sustainability metrics.
