A leader in sustainable banking

True triple bottom line banking – People, Planet and Profit – that’s the founding philosophy of Triodos, Belgium’s only fully sustainable bank.

Formed initially by a concerned study group in the Netherlands in the early 1970s, Triodos Bank (which literally means three ways) was established as a Bank in 1980 as a vehicle to finance sustainable projects and to enable companies and individuals manage their money more responsibly. Now, nearly 30 years later Triodos Bank is being hailed as the epitome of “back-to-basics” banking. It represents sustainable banking based on the real economy and is a model of social, environmental and financial responsibility.

Triodos Belgium is one of the five European branches of the group, next to the Netherlands, UK, Germany and Spain. Set up in 1993, Triodos Belgium has posted annual growth rates of 20% to 25%, and today manages ½ billion Euro in deposits, proving that the concept has a definite place in the Belgian market. Operating from one central location in Brussels, the bank serves its customers via phone, internet, or in-person at its offices. Overheads are kept low and liquidity high. This allows the bank to focus its attention on its core business: investing the savings of more than 30,000 customers in a more sustainable economy, be it through the financing of numerous sustainable credit projects or the distribution of sustainable funds that invest in stock listed companies, selected according to strict criteria.

At a time when Belgium’s big “system banks” are being propped up by the government, Triodos Bank has remained buoyant and profitable thanks to its sound fundamentals — responsibility, sustainability and transparency.

“When you think about it, the core function of a bank is exceptionally useful to society,” says Belgian CEO Olivier Marquet. “Gather the excess liquidity among households and companies, and reinvest this in the economy, preferably locally because it allows one to assess what one is financing.” With the reputation of banks worldwide badly damaged by the current credit crisis, Marquet says Triodos has been unaffected as it has remained true to banking fundamentals all along.

“We do not invest in speculative ‘constructs’ that have little or no connection to the real economy,” he says. “It’s easy to say this now given the financial crisis but this has been our commitment from the start.”

Sustainability and risk management

Using their customer’s deposits to invest in sustainable projects, Triodos Belgium is active in nature and the environment, culture and well-being, the social economy and North-South solidarity. Key investments to date have been in: