By Martin Rohner, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV)
We were delighted to celebrate fifteen years of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV) in 2024. Our movement, and our network, has come a very long way in that time. Much of the banking sector remains wedded to a profit-maximising model whose logical conclusion can be to finance the weapons industry, fossil fuels and projects that disregard the needs of the whole community. We offer a very different, credible and increasingly well recognised alternative.
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During 2024, it was no surprise that our research found that none of our members finance weapons of war. So we could make a powerful statement about the need for peace as a prerequisite to sustainable development during another extraordinary annual meeting, hosted by Banca Etica in Italy. Similarly, we were able to break new ground as the first financial network to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, with 25 GABV members from around the globe, participating.
In recent years we have invested in the infrastructure of our organisation, creating systems, tools and programmes to increase our impact. In 2024 we were able to shift our focus further outwards as part of our ongoing work to lead and transform. We cannot do that without listening to and strengthening our members and our network through collaborative efforts.
In 2024, this included building a Correspondent Banking consortium of GABV members which will collectively pitch to providers in 2025 for cost-effective, high impact services. It meant developing a values-based banking induction programme to help deepen our members’ understanding of our movement and its capacity for change, to launch early in 2025. And it meant delivering high-impact programmes and events – from a series addressing the risks and opportunities of AI, to new graduates from the GABV’s Leadership and Governance academies.
Growth is an important part of our efforts to strengthen our members and lead positive change in our industry. It was, then, a pleasure to welcome four new members during the year with efforts well underway to recruit new members, in Africa in particular, in 2025. We have welcomed SozialBank in Germany, Laboral Kutxa in Spain, and Climate First Bank and Credit Human in the United States, as new members during the year. I’m also thrilled that Sri Lanka’s Sarvodaya Development Finance and BRAC Uganda will join us at the start 2025 with more new members expected to follow from both the global South and North. Thanks to the strong engagement of our members, our communities of practice are flourishing, shaping our position on topics such as advocacy, impact measurement and biodiversity.
After 15 years of positive change, I want to thank both our current members and those that came before them.
“Their convictions and ability to turn their passion into practice laid the foundations for values-based banking, that is no longer at the periphery of mainstream banking but influencing and changing it every day.”
It’s the base from which our members, partners and the Secretariat were able to transform lives in 2024 and from where our impact will grow in the future.
A sincere thank you to you all for another year when our work has been needed more than ever.
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