About Nedbank Group

REPORT DETAILS

The Nedbank Group regards its sustainability reporting as a valuable opportunity to engage with all stakeholder groups and to outline Nedbank Group’s response to issues that have arisen during the year under review. In addition, this report offers our group’s business units the opportunity to communicate their sustainability initiatives, particularly in the areas of black economic empowerment, staff development and environmental and community involvement. This report is both a means of communicating with the investment community and a tool for staff education and awareness. To this end we have endeavoured to ensure that the 2008 Sustainability and Transformation Report presents a balanced, transparent and comprehensive account of our sustainability initiatives for the year.

For Nedbank Group, sustainability ultimately presents a means of achieving the delicate but essential balance between economic objectives, social development activities and environmental responsibility. The incorporation of sustainability considerations into our strategic approach is epitomised by our commitment to uplifting society, providing increasing numbers of South Africans access to financial services, continuing our work towards becoming a truly great place to work, minimising the impact of our business on others and the environment and always developing products and partnerships that strengthen the link between financial, social and environmental considerations.

Material issues addressed in this report

This report covers the 2008 reporting period and is the successor to the Nedbank Group 2007 Sustainability and Transformation Report. It covers the activities of Nedbank Group, focusing primarily on the South African operations, but also including information from our African operations and our international operations. To ensure consistency and comparability against previous sustainability reports, this report follows a similar structure to the 2007 report and accordingly we have maintained the dedicated stakeholder sections, but have ensured alignment of the sections with the materiality issues as described here.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and, in particular, the GRI Financial Services Sector Supplement (FSSS) form the basis for this Annual Report cycle, and an analysis of the group’s compliance with these guidelines appears here. The relevant FSSS indicators appear at the beginning of each section and the full FSSS Indices are provided at the end of this report.

Nedbank Enterprise Governance and Compliance is responsible for the coordination of sustainability initiatives across the group, provides guidance in terms of sustainability management and strategic direction and collates submissions from across the group for inclusion in this report.

This report covers material issues raised (i) by our internal and external stakeholder groups, (ii) in terms of feedback received from our inclusion in the Dow Jones and JSE sustainability indices and the SA Carbon Disclosure Report as well as feedback from numerous awards and surveys and (iii) as a result of those issues identified from benchmarking our local and international counterparts and the comprehensive recommendations that came from the assurance of our 2007 and 2008 reports.

The material issues addressed in this report have also been agreed to by the various report contributors, the Group Executive and the Group Transformation and Sustainability Committee and include the following focus areas:

Regulation as a key: ‘Most respected bank’

(Section 2: Enterprise Governance and Compliance)

• Competitive governance and compliance
• Risk management
• Ethics
• Responsible lending

Client service: ‘Great place to bank’

(Section 4: Clients)

• Understanding our clients’ needs and meeting their service expectations
• Extending our social and environmental reach

Employer of choice: ‘Great place to work’

(Section 5: Staff matters)

• Building a unique culture for competitive advantage
• Embedding talent management
• Developing and growing our people
• Accelerating transformation

Supporting our communities: ‘The caring bank’

(Section 7: CSI and staff volunteerism)

• Community support and involvement
• Employee engagement

Minimising our impact on the environment: ‘The green bank’

(Section 8: The environment and Section 9: Affinities)

• Nedbank’s approach to environmental management
• Climate Change Position Statement, intensity reduction targets and performance measures
• Carbon footprint management initiatives, overview of emissions and environmental data disclosure
• Socially responsible investment
• Other environmental initiatives
• The Nedbank Affinities

Transformation

(across all initiatives reflected in sections 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7)
There have been no significant changes in accounting standards regarding sustainability reporting during 2008.

Apart from work done by Nedbank Group Internal Audit, this sustainability report has been independently assessed by Ernst & Young, while the FSC/BEE information has been assessed by appointed auditors Sizwe Ntsalaba. Ernst & Young’s assessment included a comprehensive evaluation of the materiality, completeness and responsiveness of the report, as outlined by AA1000 principles, as well as specific key performance indicators. A detailed assurance statement appears here. We thank Ernst & Young for its efforts in verifying the report and value the recommendations for improvement that have been made.