Sustainability at Jyske Bank

Partly because of Jyske Bank’s size and partly because of our business model, which contains a number of high-risk products and clients, there is a high inherent risk that Jyske Bank may be misused for money laundering purposes or to finance terrorism. Therefore, preventing economic crime, and efforts to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism, are a top priority at Jyske Bank. We want to prevent the bank from being misused for illegal purposes of any kind, and therefore preventing and combating financial crime remains a high-priority initiative, involving prevention and control of our clients and their transactions and behaviours.

It is crucial in order to prevent Jyske Bank from being misused for money laundering and to finance terrorism to know who our clients are, and consequently, we impose stricter additional transparency requirements on business clients in cases where the company is registered in a country in which the company register is not publicly available.

In addition, we have as a result of several measures over the years reduced the volume of international clients without any connection to Denmark and in future, we will thereby only service Danes and Danes living abroad. Finally, it is crucial for the Bank’s employees to regularly undertake learning with regard to what to be aware of within their area of work and how to respond to any irregularities.

Read more about Jyske Bank’s prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism.

At a time when digitalisation is rapidly developing, a high level of IT security is crucial. More services are becoming digital and the use of personal information is also increasing in banking activities. It is Jyske Bank’s target to obtain and to maintain a level of security that can handle the current cyber threat, and that the potential risks are at an acceptable level. In addition, we have strong focus on responsible, transparent, and secure processing of client information and personal data.

Initiatives against cyber crime
The cyber threat has been increasing and is at a very high level, placing great demands on Jyske Bank’s IT security level. Our approach to defending ourselves against cyber threats is split up into several types of initiatives:

• In-depth understanding of threats and the threat actors
• Detection capability and robust IT platform to prevent attacks
• Containment and effective control of attacks for instance to limit a potential recovery job

Extension of initiatives
Cybercriminals turn their efforts towards weak links in the supply chain in order to strike at Jyske Bank and our clients. We see a revival of co-operations among cybercriminals. Specialised hacker groups for instance sell ”access” to and knowledge about specific vulnerabilities of a company to other specialised hacker groups with expertise or motives for utilising this. This requires extending our efforts and, in the years to come, we will be implementing higher security requirements for data processors and further extending security measures aimed at business partners and suppliers.

Security level is frequently tested
As part of compliance with the security policy, in-depth checks and tests are also carried out to determine whether our level of security is sufficiently high. Such tests must always be adapted to the most current knowledge of the methods of threat actors. Consequently, we test our defence from the outside and from the inside. We simulate that cybercriminals have already gained a foothold in our IT infrastructure. Status on security level, results of tests and action plans are frequently reported to the management.

Continuous improvements
In recent years, Jyske Bank has achieved significant improvements in the level of IT security which resulted in various internationally recognised accreditations, such as TF-CSIRT.

Hacker’s calendar
Hackers and cyber criminals never rest. They take any opportunity to pave the way for their “own business”, but there are times when the activity can target specific actions. To increase awareness of when we as employees need to be particularly vigilant, our IT security department created the “Hacker’s Calendar”, which provides an overview of the events that typically lead to increased phishing activity.

We successfully shared the calendar’s intuitive narrative with our corporate customers to increase awareness of cyber crime among their employees, too.
See the calendar (in Danish).

Find good advice about digital security (in Danish) and read about the bank’s handling of sensitive personal data.

Prerequisites for the success of the Jyske Bank Group are committed, competent, dynamic and responsible employees.

It is therefore important that we attract, develop and retain employees with the competencies, behaviour and attitudes needed to achieve the Bank’s strategies and goals.

Consequently, Jyske Bank works towards ensuring an attractive workplace where employees experience job satisfaction, equal rights, and development opportunities for everyone.

The good working environment
We strive for the best possible framework for development and a positive everyday life. This also involves the desire for a good balance between work and leisure time.

There is great emphasis on both the physical and psychosocial working environment, and the initiatives are preventive, holistic, visible and integrated and with high employee involvement.

Among the fixed offers are healthy canteen food, a fruit scheme, Group-paid smoking cessation guidance, small-scale exercise programmes, and opportunities of receiving guidance from external physiotherapists and occupational therapists.

In addition, we endeavour to offer a good healthcare scheme through the pension scheme.

Physical and mental health
For several years, we have had the ‘Get away from your chair’ campaign offering inspiration and support for varied working positions and micro-breaks with movement.

In addition, an e-learning program was launched and this provides tools for both the individual employee and the entire department to better control concerns, negative thoughts, and acting constructively in the face of for instance higher workload and change.

Equal rights and equal opportunities
At Jyske Bank, there is room for and a need for many different skills, and we believe that diversity in the workforce creates value.

As a business, we are best equipped to handle and benefit from change when we reflect the society of which we are part.

This means that all qualified candidates should be eligible when filling vacancies without considering factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, religion etc.

We put great emphasis on everyone having equal access to development and career opportunities, and therefore offer targeted development opportunities for the individual employee.

As the Jyske Bank Group values diversity and also believes that it provides the best solutions, we have determined targets to increase representation of members of the underrepresented gender in senior management positions.

Employees at Jyske Bank have a right to organise, and we work with and involve our employees’ union bodies in important employee matters, both ad hoc and via the formal cooperation bodies.

We have set up a working group consisting of representatives from Finansforbundet (Union For Employees In Finance), the Jyske Bank Kreds (Network), and HR, which every year reviews the Group's equal pay statistics. The group has concluded that, overall, Jyske Bank offers equal pay for equal work.

Competent and professional employees
Jyske Bank offers its employees continuous training and development in order to contribute to maintaining high-level competences and professionalism and make employees a sought-after and valuable resource.

Jyske Bank has a development programme for graduates and trainees, and we make internships available to both financial economists and bachelor-level graduates, as well as to graduate students, e.g. at MSc level and, as something new, for Bachelors of IT Engineering. Contributing to young people's access to jobs and training is an essential element of our social responsibility.

For new employees, we make an extensive onboarding programme available, designed to ensure that new colleagues experience the working community and values characterising the working life at Jyske Bank.

Read more about what it is like to work at Jyske Bank (in Danish).

Jyske Bank is dedicated to integrating sustainability in both business activities and banking operations.

It is through our business activities that we can make the largest difference. The CO₂ emission of banking operations accounts for just a tiny proportion compared with the financed emission in connection with loans and investments. Yet, we want to continue to lead the way when it comes to our own sustainability. Our banking operations must reflect that we do what we recommend our clients to do.

Therefore, we have determined a target of reducing the CO₂ emission from scopes 1 and 2 by 65% in 2030 – this is common sense.

Banking operations comprise initiatives in a number of areas such as energy optimisation of our buildings, choice of energy sources, behavioural changes, transport and business travel as well as waste handling.

Energy consumption
For many years, we have on an ongoing basis endeavoured to reduce Jyske Bank’s energy consumption. In 2020, we purchased a wind turbine at the Port of Hirtshals in order to ensure that renewable energy is produced in Denmark equivalent to the bank's energy consumption.

Today, CO₂ emissions from electricity, heating and company cars have been reduced to such an extent that the wind turbine’s production of renewable energy offsets such emission.

In addition, the bank has installed solar panels at its registered office in Silkeborg. The registered office is the location at which our energy consumption is greatest, and therefore it makes particularly good sense to produce renewable energy here.

Jyske Bank works continuously to attain energy savings and also expects a decrease in energy consumption in the future.

Transport
Jyske Bank’s company car policy determines which cars to be made available and places additional demands for low-emission cars at the upper position levels. Right now, 47% of Jyske Bank’s company cars have been replaced by low-emission cars.

We have also replaced some of the cars that are used by a broad cross-section of employees for business travel with electric vehicles.

Waste
We are very conscious about our waste and have launched an initiative designed to ensure sorting of waste and reduction of waste in general.

Through a pilot project in the spring of 2022, we collected useful knowledge about waste at Jyske Bank. The project was the forerunner of the roll-out of stations for sorting of waste at the Jyske Bank group. We were, for instance, made aware of the amount of disposable tableware in our residual waste, and consequently we have initiated the phasing out of paper and plastics cups to protect the environment and reduce the amount of waste.

Almost all our IT waste is recycled and we endeavour to ensure that all PCs replaced are recycled.

Reporting and transparency
At Jyske Bank, we want transparency in and credibility for our approach to sustainability. Our reporting is to give a balanced description of our work and outline progress on our efforts. We continuously incorporate more key figures to help increase measurability and comparability.

CO₂ emissions
Our CO₂ emissions have been calculated according to the GHG Protocol. We endeavour to ensure that it is as adequate as possible and add new relevant emission types on an ongoing basis. In 2022, the calculation was expanded with employee commuting and waste.

Our CO₂ emissions appear from ESG Fact Book.

Impact analyses
Jyske Bank has for several years analysed our impact on society through our loans, advances and investments. The analyses are called impact analyses and are part of our implementation of the UN Principles for Responsible Banking, which we signed in connection with the launch in September 2019. The target is to identify the areas of society on which we have the largest impact, positive as well as negative. It is possible to access analyses and descriptions of the method basis. So far, we have described the areas Climate and Waste.

Read more about Jyske Bank's efforts in the climate and environment area .

Through our business activities, Jyske Bank contributes to financial security and a good life – for the whole life – for many people. The good life is also about well-being and social relations which is the focal point of our social initiatives.

Jyske Bank engages in a number of social projects and initiatives for which we see an opportunity to make a difference with our resources and competencies. We engage in partnerships with other businesses, the public sector or players from the civil society concerning for instance young people’s training avenues and combating loneliness.

Among our recent initiatives we point out that Jyske Bank has given grants to students on youth education programmes, contributed to the success of Grønne sammen (Green Together) in Viborg and engaged in various activities to reduce loneliness.

Jyske Bank has chosen to take responsibility and engage in both national and local projects. Through local commitment and action, we contribute to growth and development in society.

Jyske Bank still supports the debt counselling work of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Integration and of a number of organisations - for many years, Jyske Bank employees have been active debt counsellors. In addition, Jyske Bank takes a positive view of employees’ social and voluntary engagement and many employees have contributed with special efforts in connection with the war in Ukraine by working as volunteers for instance for the Danish Red Cross.

Read about the various social projects and initiatives, where we make a difference with our resources and competencies.

The major responsibility for society's view of Jyske Bank as a financial institution rests chiefly on ourselves. Society needs to have confidence in us – and such confidence is created through our values, attitudes, and behaviours. This responsibility also comes with the duty to run the bank based on propriety.

We are preoccupied with ensuring that we always comply with legislation in force at any time and simultaneously live up to the expectations of our stakeholders.

Shareholders, clients and employees
Jyske Bank’s main stakeholders are shareholders, clients and employees. We work continuously to ensure an appropriate balancing of the interests of these three groups, which supports a long-term and balanced business development. Hence short-term and one-sided transactions that favour one of the groups can be avoided, and no client or other business partner is so good or important that we will compromise on our responsibility, which is at all times more important to us than our earnings.

Foundation of a healthy corporate structure
It is the living values in the organisation that ensure that Jyske Bank meets own expectations regarding being a responsible member of society. These values ​​have been our guideline for many years but have been continuously updated and relaunched so that they remain relevant for all employees.

In addition, both the communication and decision-making processes at Jyske Bank are characterized by being open to the involvement of a wide range of views. All employees have a voice and are encouraged to express opinions, but also to draw attention to matters that need to be corrected. Read more about Jyske Bank.

Openness and transparency
It is our ambition to be as transparent as possible, both internally and externally. We therefore publish relevant policies and data, and we always cooperate with authorities - when it comes to supervision, procedures and specific cases. Our approach is that if errors occur, we are open about these errors, correct them and learn from them.

Among policies that express the values, attitudes and behaviour that characterize our approach to running a responsible business is Jyske Bank's whistleblower scheme. The scheme allows employees to submit a report anonymously in the event of potential violations of financial regulations or serious offences, or the suspicion of this, that could be of importance for the Group or the life or health of individuals.

Another example is our Anti-Bribery and Corruption Policy reflecting that the entire Jyske Bank Group accepts no forms of bribery, corruption, nepotism or other improper business practices. There must not be any state of dependency that harms the employee and Jyske Bank, and no one must be in any doubt about our motives.

High standards of advisory services
We work continuously at enabling clients to make decisions on a well-informed basis. It’s all about knowing your client and what the client in question can manage in purely financial terms and when we apply this principle, our overall business is just as healthy as the individual client’s commitment to the Bank.

Consequently, the clients can always expect our employees to act with honesty and integrity and to offer financial advice that takes individual considerations into account, meets the client’s needs, and adds value.

Jyske Bank has chosen not to make use of performance-dependent pay, which, by its very nature, can lead to short-term and one-sided decisions that have a detrimental effect on the long-term value creation, needs, and goals of clients, shareholders, and the Group. In this way, we ensure that there is no doubt that what we offer clients serves the client's interests and needs.

Also in connection with our tax policy, the Group wants to live up to its corporate social responsibility and meet legitimate expectations of proper and honest business conduct that reflects the Group’s values. In addition, the Group pursues a value-based tax policy that ensures that we provide adequate client-related tax advice regarding our products and services, which we are obliged to do pursuant to applicable legislation. Our value-based tax policy also means that we do not provide aggressive tax advice, but instead advice that is in harmony with tax legislation intentions. The framework for our tax advice is described in fact sheets (in Danish) that are available to our clients and will only provide advice on tax in areas referred to in these fact sheets.

Read more in code of conduct.