KBC clarifies inclusion in PAX's 'Don’t bank on the bomb' report
KBC applies a strict policy
PAX has published a report on investments in nuclear weapons, including mention of KBC. KBC is aware of its role in society, and takes its responsibilities in that regard very seriously.
That includes a number of new and updated sustainability and social responsibility policies published on 12 September this year. PAX states on page 26 of their report that they finished it at the end of the August and that they had been unable to thoroughly analyse our new polices and reflect this in the report.
These new polices include further tightening of our policy on arms-related activities, plus very explicit and restrictive lending conditions for companies involved in any way with nuclear weapons.
Visit www.kbc.com/en/sustainability-responsibility to learn more about our policies on sustainable and socially responsible business.
See also our policy on arms-related activities at www.kbc.com for more specific details in this regard.
We continue to work resolutely on our sustainable and socially responsible business objectives, more details of which can be found in our Report to Society (also available on our corporate website).
The PAX report once again refers to lending to the British company Serco. KBC has already clarified that Serco is a service-providing business active and directly involved in the nuclear weapons industry, but not itself an arms manufacturer (see www.kbc.com for our 10 October 2013 response in this regard and later statements in the press).
Ethical and legal requirements prevent us from providing details of individual cases. We do, however, reiterate that we are extremely reluctant to finance any type of arms-related activities and examine requests of this kind very carefully.
We have applied a strict policy regarding investments in the weapons industry since 2004. This policy effectively means that we refuse to invest in any business involved in the development, manufacture or sale of controversial weapons systems or their key components. Biological weapons, anti‐personnel landmines, cluster bombs and munitions and weapons containing depleted uranium are regarded as being controversial, while nuclear weapons are not legally or ethically categorised as such. As stated above, our policy on arms-related activities has been even tighter since 12 September 2016. We will honour existing credit arrangements in accordance with the relevant contract terms and conditions.
