Stakeholder Engagement

At UniCredit, we place a high value on actively listening to our stakeholders. This has always been a fundamental principle for us and is the reason why we make a consistent effort to invest in mutual feedback opportunities with all our stakeholders.

MATERIALITY ANALYSIS

The materiality analysis remains a fundamental tool for listening to our stakeholders, supporting our business strategy and helping the value creation over the long term.

It takes a dynamic and forward-looking view of ESG topics, allowing us to take regular action on emerging risks and relevant issues. What may be immaterial to a company or industry today could become material tomorrow.

Every year, we carry out our materiality analysis by taking into consideration a variety of sources to ensure that we are encompassing all the material topics in the banking
industry for our stakeholders.

We apply information sourced both externally, by the Datamaran tool, and internally, by listening to our stakeholders.

Compared to last year, this year's analysis has led us to make some changes to material topics.

Two material topics have been renamed with a broader scope: 

• Climate change has evolved into Climate and environmental impacts to include all environmental risks and not only climate-related ones; 
• Demographic change has been renamed Political and social changes to highlight a more comprehensive view on external context.

Moreover, two new topics have been added to our mapping: 

• Future of work, highlighting the increasing relevance that global trends such as digitalisation, demographic changes and pandemics have on jobs, and
• Responsible tax practices, taking into consideration the transparent management of taxation matters.

DOUBLE MATERIALITY: THE INTANGIBLE FACTORS WITH AN IMPACT ON THE CORE BUSINESS

This year we continue to focus on the double materiality analysis, highlighting the financial perspective which encompasses all the sustainability risks and opportunities that can have an impact on our company's growth, performance and position over the short, medium or long term. This concept also covers any intangible factors that can affect a company's core business value such as growth, profitability, capital efficiency and risk exposure. This is referred to as the outside-in perspective, as opposed to the inside-out perspective, and displays a company's actual and potential impact on sustainability issues.

SOURCES AND OUTCOMES OF THE FINANCIAL MATERIALITY ASSESSMENT

To develop financial materiality, we applied information sourced by the Datamaran tool. This leverages annual financial reports from industry peers, mandatory regulations, voluntary initiatives from financial markets and SASB standards regarding capital.

In order to have a more comprehensive view of the financial materiality analysis, we also asked the Top Management to express the most important material topics that could influence our financial structure. Based on these sources, as we report in the matrix chart, the most important material topics that could have an impact on our ability to create financial value are:

• Digitalisation and innovation
• Bank solidity
• Cyber security

Regarding Digitalisation and innovation, we recognise that being the bank for Europe’s future means becoming a truly digital bank. Embedding Digital & Data across our bank is also crucial to implementing our new lean operating model. In 2022 we invested in 545 digital hires (mainly tech specialists) and in cyber-security, with a major security incidents reduction of 35%.

Considering Bank solidity, our last outstanding Group results showed that we have become a transformed and structurally improved bank with a clear vision and strategy and quality growth underpinned by capital and operational excellence.

In relation to Cyber security, we have put in place our Digital Security Strategy to mitigate the risk of cyber threats. It encompasses a Digital Security Global Policy and detection processes to ensure a suitable level of oversight and protection of digital assets, data and information.

Materiality Matrix 

The materiality matrix below represents the upper-right quadrant of the overall matrix, used to consolidate and assess concerns from all of the bank’s stakeholders: it not only takes into account their needs and expectations (y axis), but also monitors our investments and ability to address the issues stakeholders care about (x axis).

As per our 2021 analysis, also this year we considered outside-in perspectives (financial materiality) in the data taken into account¹. This point of view is highlighted by bigger icons.
 

1  See previous focus for further information.