Sustainalytics upgrades ESG risk rating of Slovenia's NLB

"Our banking group received a new ESG Risk Rating of 16.0 and was assessed by Sustainalytics to be at low risk of experiencing material financial impacts from ESG factors. We have thus improved last year's rating by 1.7 points, and the improved rating ranks us among the 13% of the best banks among all companies assessed by the Sustainalytics," NLB said in a filing with the Ljubljana Stock Exchange on Friday.

NLB improved its sustainable operations the most in the area of considering ESG risks and opportunities in the entire financial business, human resources and ethical operations, the bank said.

"Sustainability is not a buzzword to play around with casually and in reality, forget about it. It is a very tedious process, continuous and really long-term. It is built of small steps and changes that may seem insignificant individually, but when viewed as a whole, they merge into a large, unstoppable movement. And this is actually even more important than the risk rating itself," said NLB CEO Blaz Brodnjak noted.

Sustainalytics has assigned the first ESG risk rating to NLB, of 17.7, in December 2022. Sustainalytics' ESG risk ratings measure a company’s exposure to industry-specific material ESG risks and how well a company is managing those risks, providing a quantitative measure of unmanaged ESG risk and distinguishing between five levels of risk: negligible, low, medium, high and severe.