Verification statement

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Independent Assurance Statement to the Directors and Management of Nedbank Group Limited

Scope of our engagement
Nedbank Group Limited’s (‘Nedbank’s’) 2008 Sustainability and Transformation Report (‘the Report’), has been prepared by the Directors and management of Nedbank (‘Management’). Management is responsible for the collection and presentation of information within the Report, and for maintaining adequate records and internal controls that are designed to support the sustainability reporting process. There are currently no prescribed requirements relating to the preparation, publication and verification of sustainability reports.

Our responsibility, in accordance with Nedbank’s instructions, was to carry out a ‘limited level’ assurance engagement; on the South African section of the Report, over certain key performance indicators; the self-declared Global Reporting Initiative Third Generation (GRI G3) application level; and the Report’s adherence to the AA1000 Principle Standards 2008 principles of materiality, responsiveness and inclusivity.

Our responsibility in performing our assurance activities is to the Management of Nedbank only and in accordance with the terms of reference for this engagement as agreed with them. We do not, therefore, accept or assume any responsibility for any other purpose or to any other person or organisation. Any reliance any such third party may place on the Report is entirely at its own risk.

Our assurance engagement was planned and performed in accordance with the International Federation of Accountants’ (IFAC) International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000, Assurance Engagements Other Than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information. The Report has been evaluated using the following criteria: the principles of Materiality, Responsiveness and Inclusivity as set out in AccountAbility’s AA1000 Principle Standard (AA1000PS); as well as against the application of the GRI G3 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (the Guidelines).


We have designed our procedures in order for us to evaluate the Report against the principles of materiality, responsiveness and inclusivity as set out in AA1000PS specifically as follows:

Work performed
In order to form our conclusions we undertook the steps outlined below:

Level of assurance
Our evidence-gathering procedures have been designed to obtain limited assurance (as set out in ISAE 3000) on which to base our conclusions for certain key performance indicators; the self-declared GRI G3 application level; and the Report’s adherence to the AA1000 PS. The procedures conducted do not provide all the evidence that would be required in a reasonable assurance engagement and, accordingly, we do not express a reasonable assurance opinion. While we considered the effectiveness of Management’s internal controls when determining the nature and extent of our procedures, our review was not designed to provide assurance on internal controls.

Limitations of our scope

Our conclusions
Subject to our limitations of scope noted above and on the basis of our procedures for this assurance engagement, we provide the following conclusions:

Materiality
Based on our work performed, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that:
- Any material aspects concerning Nedbank’s sustainability performance have been excluded from the Report.
- Any material issues have been excluded from, or misstatements made in relation to information on which Nedbank has made judgements in respect to the content of the Report.
- The information or explanations on statements or assertions on Nedbank’s sustainability activities presented in the Report that we have reviewed, has been misstated.

Indicators
Based on our work performed, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that there are any errors that would materially affect the eight key performance indicators reported by Nedbank Management. Nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that data pertaining to these key indicators has not been properly collated from information reported at the various locations and in line with internal reporting mechanisms.

Responsiveness
Based on our work performed, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that any issues of stakeholder interest were not included in the Report’s scope and content.

Inclusivity
Based on our work performed, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that any material issues were excluded or misstated in relation to the content of the Report.

GRI
Based on our work performed, including consideration of the Report, elements of the Annual Report and the BEE Report, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that Management’s assertion that their sustainability reporting meets the requirements of the A+ application level of the Guidelines is not fairly stated.

Selected observations
We noted that:

Our independence and assurance team
The firm and all professional personnel involved in this engagement are independent of Nedbank and our team has not performed any work for Nedbank that may conflict with our ability to express independent assurance over this Report. Our team is drawn from our Climate Change and Sustainability Services Department and has the required competencies and experience for this engagement.

Ernest and Young

13 March 2009