ING and EcoVadis have expanded their relationship to help ING’s business lending customers on the sustainability mission that is central to both companies’ values, pioneering an innovative new business loan offering. The ING sustainability improvement loan will help “make sustainability pay” by incentivizing and rewarding sustainability performance. This exciting new use of sustainability ratings helps business customers who engage in measuring and improving their sustainability to also benefit from better loan rates.
ING has long demonstrated a deep commitment to sustainable business within its own operations and beyond for many years. For example, EcoVadis has been partnered with ING since 2014 to provide Sustainability Ratings for ING’s supply chain. ING sourcing and procurement teams use the ratings to help their supply partners to measure and improve sustainability performance.
The new loan offering emphasizes borrower sustainability improvement by tracking their sustainability performance over time, and adjusting the interest rate based on this performance. As the sustainability score improves, the interest rate decreases, and vice-versa.
ING has engaged several ESG/sustainability rating agencies, including EcoVadis, to measure this performance. For this offering, EcoVadis scores will be used to measure sustainability performance primarily of candidate borrowing companies that are not listed on a stock exchange (and published information is not always available).
“Rewarding sustainability improvement is our aim and the key message in our new sustainability campaign,” says Dr. Roland Mees, director ING Sustainable Finance. “We encourage clients across all sectors to improve their sustainability performance and we offer them incentives to do so. Companies can benefit from a sustainability rating and now an improved rating can result in lower cost of funding.”
To participate, companies first engage with ING to learn more about which loans may be appropriate for their needs. ING will then direct them to EcoVadis to complete the assessment, and to share their Rating and Scorecard. To encourage companies to be transparent on their sustainability efforts and improvement, ING has even committed to cover the full costs for an EcoVadis assessment for a select number of companies committed to sustainable improvement. Take advantage of this offer now: Learn more at https://www.ingwb.com/sustainability.
Business loan candidates who are existing EcoVadis customers with a current Scorecard will instantly boost their ROI for using EcoVadis to measure their sustainable practices: After inquiring with ING, they simply follow the EcoVadis standard process to authorize the share.
Learn more at https://www.ingwb.com/sustainability
Contact us here for more information or a demo of how EcoVadis ratings can drive value in your supply chain.
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