Swedish Banks and Socially Responsible Investments - A qualitative study of strategies and communication

Abstract: Purpose: To describe what strategies Swedish banks use when investing socially responsible and how these are communicated. Limitations: The study is limited to investigate five big banks on the Swedish market who invest in funds and stocks. Method: To answer the research questions, a qualitative method is used. Primary data is collected through semi-structured telephone interviews. Secondary data is collected through information on the banks’ webpages, CSR/SRI-reports, relevant internet sources and previous research from recognized journals and books. Empirical results and conclusion: All the banks believe SRI to be a good investment opportunity and most of them associate SRI with long-term financial benefits. Other common drivers are customer demand and expectations from society. The banks work with sustainability throughout all of the funds at different levels and they use a combination of the SRI strategies screening, best-in-class and active ownership depending on the level of sustainability and responsibility they wish to reach. The main driver for communicating the strategies for SRI is to be transparent towards customers and the information provided is to be found at webpages and in CSR/SRI-reports. The demand and knowledge of SRI from institutional customers have increased significantly, but it has not yet reached levels where it is fully embraced by retail customers. Most of the banks have an ongoing private communication through meetings and written information with their institutional customers and with their retail customers they communicate mainly through private consultations at the bank offices. To increase the retail customers’ interest of SRI we suggest more information and education about SRI within the banks so that everyone can transfer this knowledge to the customers and additionally actively promote sustainability funds. Suggestions for further research: Further research is suggested to include smaller banks in a similar study to investigate if the phenomena we found can be valid for Swedish banks in general. We also suggest further research within the area of communication and marketing such as what affect the webpages have on retail customers in terms of information and communication of sustainability funds and if active marketing of sustainability funds would affect the retail customers’ perception of SRI.