Rabobank

Coöperatieve Rabobank U.A.
Quick Facts
Type	Cooperative
sector	Financial services
Headquarters (Benelux Organization)	Utrecht, Netherlands
Year of Origin	1895
Emissions (All Scopes)	Estimated 26 Megatons of CO2 (2020)
Net Income	EUR €3.004 billion (2020)
Key People	Wiebe Draijer (Chairman of the Board) Bas Brouwers (CFO)
Subsidiaries

Coöperatieve Rabobank U.A, stylized as Rabobank, is a Dutch multinational banking and financial service company leading in food and agriculture financing. It also is a big investor in mortgages and real estate in the Netherlands. It started as as a cooperation of small credit banks for farmers. After the Coöperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Bank and the Coöperatieve Centrale Boerenleenbank merged in 1972 it became the Coöperatieve Centrale Raiffeissen-Boerenleenbank B.A., or Rabobank. In 2016 local branches of the Rabobank and Rabobank Nederland fused under the name Coöperatieve Rabobank U.A.. It has 520 locations in the Netherlands and about 8,8 million customers in the Netherlands plus 0,7 million worldwide. The bank is active in 39 countries and has various subsidiaries.

Company Structure

Rabobank is a cooperative bank, which means they don’t have shareholders but members. Currently it consists of six governing bodies. The General Members Council consists of member representatives (the chairs of the local Supervisory Boards) and is considered as the highest governing body. It approves decisions made by the Board of Directors and Commissioners.

Board of Directors

Board of Directors

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Wiebe Draijer (chair	CEO, Chairman of the Managing Board	1218
Bas Brouwers	CFO, Member of the Managing Board	1099
Els de Groot	Member of the Managing Board	953
Kirsten Konst	Member of the Managing Board	995
Bart Leurs	Member of the Managing Board	954
Mariëlle Lichtenberg	Member of the Managing Board	939
Berry Marttin	Member of the Managing Board	1119
Janine Vos	Member of the Managing Board	868

Supervisory Board

Commissioners

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Marjan Trompetter	Chair	162
Jan Nooitgedagt	Vice Chair	113
Gert-Jan van den Akker	Member Supervisory Board	64
Petri Hofsté	Member Supervisory Board	110
Pascal Visée	Member Supervisory Board	96
Annet Aris	Member Supervisory Board	90
Mark Pensaert	Member Supervisory Board	96
Arian Kamp	Member Supervisory Board	110
Johan van Hall	Member Supervisory Board	6

Accountant

The external accountant of Rabobank is PricewaterhouseCoopers Accountants N.V.

Main Activities

Rabobank is a financial cooperative bank and focuses on services such as payment services, savings, insurance and loans. The bank is active in various sectors such as retail banking, wholesale banking, rural banking, vendor finance, leasing and property development. The bank's biggest portfolio's are Dutch private mortgages (188.8 billion euros in 2021) and private lending to the food and agriculture sector (40.3 billion euros in the Netherlands and 65.2 worldwide in 2021)<refhttps://statics.rabobank.com/binaries-processed/annual-report-2020_931168957.pdf p.8</ref>. By 2021 Rabobank had 8.9 million Dutch and 0.7 international customers..

Government

Rabobank does not have a royal status in the Netherlands and has not received NOW support from the Dutch government.

Paris Agreement to Today

Since the Paris agreement Rabobank has endorsed various national and international climate ambitions and signed various sector-wide agreements where in which emission reduction targets have been set. On a governmental level Rabobank has in various statements endorsed the ambitions of the Paris Agreement and the Dutch Climate Commitment in 2019. It has also signed the Climate Commitment in which about 50 organisations and companies from the Dutch financial sector commit themselves to publicly report on their emissions from 2020, develop reduction plans and ambitions for emission reductions by 2030 and stay within the boundaries of the Paris Agreement. Rabobank has also endorsed the report Klimaatverantwoorde Zuivelsector (Climateresponsible Dairy Sector) from the Sustainable Dairy Chain (Duurzame Zuivelketen or DZK) in which the Dutch Dairy sector lays out its climate commitments.

Financial results since 2015

Financial situation

Year	Revenue	Profit	Dividend
2015	13.014 Billion EUR	2.214 EUR	XXX EUR
2016	12.805 Billion EUR	2.024 EUR	XXX EUR
2017	12.001 Billion EUR	2.674 EUR	XXX EUR
2018	12.020 EUR	3.004 EUR	XXX EUR
2019	11.915 Billion EUR	2.203 EUR	XXX EUR
2020	10.782 Billion EUR	1.096 Billion EUR	0 EUR
2021	12.169 Billion EUR	3.692 Billion EUR	254 Million EUR

Scandals and controversies

Rabobank's office in Utrecht, the Netherlands

In 2014 Rabobank provided loans to Bumitama Agri Group (BAP) who knowingly destroyed forests home to endangered orang utans. It also partially used prohibited peatlands and its plantations did not have proper permits.

In 2015 it was reported that Rabobank was involved in, and profiting from, a corrupt landrobbing scheme in Romania. Corrupt officials in rural Romania were able to sell illegally confiscated land to the Rabobank (Rabo Farm) by falsifying documents in which farmers seemed to approve to sell their land. Rabobank stated it did not know about these illegal practices and referred to their own due-dilligence policy.

In 2017 Rabobank, as well as ING, financed the import of granite from quarries that use child labor. In a response Rabobank states that its clients comply with international labour legislation and if not they will discuss this with their clients, possibly leading them to stop their cooperation.

In 2018 Rabobank NA (a Californian subsidiary of Rabobank Groep) was charged for money laundering practices and had to forfeit $368,701,259 as a result of allowing illicit funds to be processed through the bank without adequate Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) or AML review.

In 2021 Global Witness reported Rabobank, since 2016, might have earned 72.6 million through deals with clients that are linked to deforestation practices. The biggest corporation Rabobank invested in is Sinar Mas Group, who owns Asian Pulp and Paper (APP), a company accused of “destroying Indonesian rainforest and contributing to disastrous peatland fires.” According to Global Witness Rabobank has provided Sinar Mas with 376 million dollar in loans and credit since 2016. From these deals they could have earned about 43.8 million dollars in deforestation-adjusted earnings from these deals”. Another important client in this case is the Salim Group, a conglomerate of companies owned by Anthoni Salim, the fourth richest man in Indonesia

Rabobank, as the biggest investor in the Dutch agricultural industry, is also the largest investor in nitrogen emitting agricultural activities in the Netherlands. In 2019 the Dutch Raad van State ruled that the PAS programme (a programme rolled out by the government to distribute the amount of nitrogen that could be emitted by companies and farmers) was insufficient to use when allocating permissions to emit nitrogen. As a direct result a large number of projects (mainly in construction) that had obtained permission to emit nitrogen via the PAS programma had to be halted. A so called ‘nitrogencrisis’ broke out and ever since the government is searching for ways to drastically reduce the emission of nitrogen in various sectors. Rabobank, as a leading investor in agriculture, naturally plays an important role here.

Current Emissions

Rabobank reported that the emissions in their mortgages portfolio was 5,943 mln kg of Co2 in 2016, a slight improvement from their 2015 emissions which were 6,089 mln kg of Co2. The financed emissions of Rabobank in the Netherlands in 2018 were an estimated 19,099 kg of Co2. Both figures were calculated by the PCAF method. Rabobank does not give data on their worldwide emissions.

Only since 2021 has Rabobank started to extensively report on their scope 3 emissions. In their 2021 impact report the bank reported on 85% of their scope 3 emissions from 2020, which added up to 46.4 megatonnes of CO2-eq. Of this total, 3.4Mt CO2 comes from their international leasing portfolio which covers leasing contracts to tractors both in the Netherlands and internationally. Only 23% of their leasing portfolio is covered in this figure. 7.7Mt comes from corporate wholesale clients and 18.6 from rural clients, covering 75% of their wholesale and rural portfolio. 2.1Mt comes from loans to private individuals, covering 99% of their private loans portfolio. Furthermore in their portfolio of Dutch business clients, which is covered for 95%, 11.2Mt comes from food and agriculture, 3.1Mt from trade, industry and services and 0.3Mt from commercial real estate. This figure excludes Dutch wholesale clients as they are included in the calculation for their international wholesale portfolio.

Rabobank calculates their scope 3 emissions according to the PCAF method and, with the exception of leasing (which only incorporates scope 1), only incorporates the scope 1 and 2 emissions of their clients.

Total emissions since 2015 ( in megatonnes CO2-eq.)

Year	Scope 1	Scope 2	Scope 3	Total
2015	0.05	0.1	0.18 (incomplete)	Unknown
2016	0.05	0.11	0.18 (incomplete)	Unknown
2017	0.04	0.11	0.17 (incomplete)	Unknown
2018	0.04	0.08	0.14 (incomplete)	Unknown
2019	0.03	0.8	0.13 (incomplete)	Unknown
2020	0.02	0.05	0.08 (incomplete)	Unknown
2021	0.02	0.05	46.4 (85% of financed emissions covered)	46.47 (incomplete)

Climate Policy and Plans

In their 2020 rapport on climate change Rabobank claims to commit to the goals of the Paris agreement and that it will adjust their policies to help keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius. It has so far not set any goals for the emissions in their complete value chain.

By 2023 Rabobank aims to reduce the emissions of their own operations by 20% per FTE compared to 2018, which is 40% in absolute terms. It claims to have been climate neutral with regard to their own operations since 2007, partially by compensation emissions though purchasing Gold Standard certified CO2 credits. Their own operations only account for a small portion of their total emissions.

An important portfolio for the Rabobank is food and agribusiness. Rabobank supports the goal set by the Dutch Climate agreement of cutting emissions with 6Mton by 2030. It has not set any specific emission targets for their own food and agribusiness portfolio. At the moment the bank is involved in setting up Banking for Impact on Climate in Agriculture (B4ICA). This group of banks, scientists and relevant experts is set up to develop a strategy to address data gaps with regard to assessing climate impact in agribusiness. Specifically it will help estimate the carbon footprint of individual farmers and agriculture subsectors and set targets for various climate scenarios.

With regard to their SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) portofolio Rabobank has not set any specific emission reduction targets.

Rabobank reports that soon all of their investment products will consist of sustainable funds band aims their funds to have 50% lower CO2 intensity compared with worldwide indices worldwide. In the energy portofolio of Rabobank the biggest share of their investments is in Renewables, with around 80%, and it aims to have driven that up to about 90% in 2024. The bank has not committed itself to fully divest from carbon intensive energy.

In 2021 Rabobank published a 'road to Paris' in their 2021 impact report. An important target they set here is a 55% reduction of their emissions by 2030 in the EU and the Netherlands. . This commitment, however, does not cover their entire operations worldwide.

Concerning their ambitions in the dairy sector Rabobank refers to the Dutch Climate Agreement from 2019 and the ambitions of Klimaatverantwoorde Zuivelsector (a 2018 report stating the climate ambitions of the Dutch diary sector). Following these ambitions, the Dutch dairy sector commits to a 0.8Mt CO2-eq methane reduction by 2030 . Rabobank also refers to the Sustainable Dairy Chain (Duurzame Zuivelketen or DZK) ambition of a 0.2Mt CO2-eq reduction for soil and crops and a 0.6Mt CO2-eq reduction in energy.

With regard to their mortgage portfolio Rabobank states it probably will not satisfy their ambition to have an average energylabel B by 2024 and A by 2030 and that new targets will be set in the future. Additionally Rabobank raised their 2022 target percentage of customers financing sustainability measures in their mortage application to 30%.

Rabobank aims to expand their sustainable energy portfolio with 20-30% the coming two years. As Rabobank sees gas as an important transition fuel it will increase their share of natural gas to about 25% of their TCF energy portfolio.

Conclusion

The current climate policies of Rabobank are not in line with the Paris Agreement as it has no specific ambitions have been set to bring the carbon emissions in their complete value chain down and eventually to zero. The bank primarily refers to Dutch and international reports in which various sectors set sector wide targets for CO2-eq reductions. But Rabobank has yet to translate this in hard emission reduction targets for themselves on both the short term, specifically 2030, and on the long term, namely 2050. Instead of setting ambitious targets that push the financial sector to be more Paris aligned Rabobank instead limits its ambitions to targets that are already set sector-wide. As such Rabobank has so far not set targets that align with the 1.5 degree target of the Paris agreement. Another important issue is that Rabobank does not yet report on all the emissions in their value chain, missing 15% of their 2020 scope 3 emissions, and that it only reports extensively on their scope 3 emissions since 2021. This makes it difficult to assess their reduction in emissions compared to previous years.