Our Approach

Fransabank Group believes that Corporate Social Responsibility is about making a contribution to sustainable development and society through creating long-term value for our shareholders, customers, employees and other stakeholders. This means putting our Corporate Principles into practice and considering not only the economic, but also the social and environmental impacts in all our decisions.

Therefore, we aim to have CSR as:

  • A holistic approach
  • Incorporated fully in the core strategy and business activities
  • Reflected in the Bank’s culture

Moving towards this goal, we follow three principles:

  • Concentrate our CSR efforts
  • Build a deep understanding of the benefits
  • Find the right partners
Yet, our corporate responsibility is shaped by the increasing need to ensure effective stakeholder relations, to fulfill the socioeconomic needs of the communities in which we conduct our business and the wider social, economic and environmental requirements whenever we exist or operate.
  • Our Stakeholder Engagement
    One of the ways we inspire trust is by engaging in a continuous dialogue with our main stakeholders. Our main internal stakeholders include Fransabank’s Board of Directors, shareholders and employees; whereas, our external stakeholders remain our customers, regular authorities, the media, interest groups, local communities, business partners and suppliers.
    Our Stakeholder Engagement
  • Our Materiality Assessment
    The information gathered from our stakeholder engagement sessions provide essential input to our process of identifying the issues that are core to the Bank’s sustainable development. These issues are at the top of our interest and form our material topics. Consequently, our materiality assessment guides for reporting and informs our strategic approach.
    Our Materiality Assessment

Assessment Procedure

We followed these principles to conduct our materiality assessement.
  • Determining and understanding the issues significant to our stakeholders.
  • Identifying and categorizing the most significant issues.
  • Bringing together the results into a matrix, and evaluating each issue on the basis of its more general social, environmental and economic impact, based on a scale of 1- 10 (1 being the least important to 10 most important).
  • Further details on the methodology and outcome are shared in our yearly CSR reports.

Our CSR Pillars

As part of the process of continuously updating our sustainability strategy and our means of communication, our CSR initiatives are allotted into 5 main pillars:
Roadmap to the UN Global Compact
  
In 1999, Chairman Adnan Kassar, President of the ICC, extended the relationship between the United Nations and the business world to include mutually supported goals and objectives.

The first initiative was the launch of the UN Global Compact (UNGC); a policy platform and framework for companies that are committed to sustainability and responsible business in the areas of: Human Rights, Labour, Environment, and Anti-Corruption.
In 2013, Fransabank became an active participant in the UNGC; becoming the first Bank in Lebanon to endorse the Global Compact 10 principles as an integral part of its strategy. Then, in 2014, we decided to go a step further and sign the Business for Peace Statement of Support as we deem our role constructive in fostering development, stability and peace in the communities where we operate.

In 2019, Fransabank endorsed the UN Women's Empowerment Principles (WEP) as part of its equal opportunities and inclusion approach, joining over 2,000 other business leaders from around the world. The Principles present seven steps that businesses and other sectors take to advance and empower women. 
Our Pledge to the Sustainable Development Goals
We pledged to advance in specific six Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through our CSR strategy and initiatives:
 
More on our contribution to the selected SDGs