Top banks score low on climate, human rights

Policy rankings of five leading commercial banks show the lenders have low policy commitments to climate change, human rights, gender equality and labour rights while none discloses policies on nature and tax when lending money to firms. Speaking at the launch of a report “Benchmarking the sustainability policies of banks in Pakistan” by Fair Finance Pakis­tan on Monday, Senator Farhat­ullah Babar raised concerns about low scores of banks on the human rights criteria and asked why these lenders do not disclose their policies transparently. Fair Finance Pakistan assessed the sustainability policies of Habib Bank Ltd (HBL), Allied Bank Ltd (ABL), National Bank of Pakistan Ltd (NBP), Meezan Bank Ltd (MBL), and MCB Bank Ltd (MCB) across 10 thematic areas, including climate change, corruption, gender equality, human rights, labour rights, nature, arms, tax, transparency and accountability and financial consumer protection.