Sustainable, green and circular loans

To give impetus and tangible support to the green and circular economy, the Group has created specific plafonds and developed a wide and diversified offer of financing and consulting products dedicated to all customer types in Italy and abroad.

In particular, for small and medium-sized companies, as part of the Motore Italia Energy Transition program, the Group offers financing to reduce energy dependence, tools to mitigate the increase in raw material costs, specialized consultancy services for access to tenders and the implementation of complex projects.

UN SDGs SUPPORTED

Green - Mutuo Domus is a subsidised mortgage (reduction of the APR and free energy certification for renovation purposes) that makes it possible to purchase and build a residential property in Italy with a high energy efficiency class (equal to or higher than B) or to renovate a residential property in Italy with an improvement of at least one energy class.

Intesa Sanpaolo participates in the EeMAP (Energy Efficient Mortgages Action Plan) project, as part of which it has joined the Energy Efficient Mortgage Label (EEML), which aims to maximize the regulatory alignment of the mortgage portfolio with the main legal and political developments, including in particular the EU Taxonomy, which indicates the criteria by which the financed activities can be considered sustainable from an environmental point of view. As part of the EEML project, from 2021 the Bank reports quarterly aggregate data on the green portfolio on its website.

In addition to promoting the upgrading of real estate assets to improve their environmental performance, with the XME Protection insurance policy Intesa Sanpaolo offers services to cover damage caused by atmospheric events such as floods, inundations and water bombs. As of December 2023, customers subscribed to 470,000 policies with flood and earthquake coverage.

S-Loans are financing to support small and medium-sized businesses in a process of structural change and improving of their sustainability profile by correlating economic and financial decisions with their environmental and social impacts. S-Loans involve the definition of specific ESG targets through indicators (KPIs) contractually defined and subject to annual monitoring in the explanatory notes to the company's financial statements. Upon achievement of the targets, there are rewards in terms of reduction in the cost of financing.

In 2023 the Bank created the new S-Loan CER (Renewable Energy Community) for companies that decide to invest in renewable energy: the mechanism provides an incentive in terms of a concession on the interest rate, with an additional bonus if the company allocates part of the energy produced and not self-consumed to the Renewable Energy Community².

It's the Intesa Sanpaolo Group's program for business investments in the energy transition towards renewable energy, energy efficiency and the circular economy, supported by a credit plafond of €76 billion.
With the S-Loan CER (REC S-Loan), the program also encourages the creation of Renewable Energy Communities (REC), recognizing an additional premium on the cost of financing if the company allocates part of the energy produced and not consumed to RECs.
RECs represent a virtuous project of self-production of electricity from green sources: groups of households, businesses or Third Sector entities choose to join together to self-produce and consume electricity from renewable sources, making the energy shareable at zero kilometers.

The circular economy offers new business opportunities to companies and contributes to the eco-sustainable transition of the economic system by reducing the consumption of natural resources. To support its development with its Business Plan, Intesa Sanpaolo has renewed the commitment already made with the previous Plan by allocating a credit plafond of EUR 8 billion (for the green and circular economy, with specific incentives).

The Group is a strategic partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the principal promoter of the global transition to the circular economy, with which it has defined criteria for assessing the level of circularity of the initiatives proposed by companies.

Some projects funded are the replacement of critical materials from fossil sources with others from recycled or biological sources, the reuse of urban organic waste for the production of biomethane and compost and the recovery of CO₂, the revamping of renewable energy plants with extension of useful life and increase in production capacity, and the recovery of industrial production waste for reuse in new product lines.

Born in 2022 from the collaboration between Intesa Sanpaolo Assicura and the Pool Ambiente consortium, the policy, in addition to protecting companies from the risk of requesting compensation deriving from their responsibilities, promotes an orientation towards the protection of the environment, and therefore of communities, spreads the culture of prevention and provides tools to manage and resolve the environmental crisis.

¹ From 2023, the reporting follows the Rules for the Classification of Credit products and Sustainable Credit Operations approved by the Group at the end of 2022. Loans falling into the categories of environmental sustainability, social sustainability, "other sustainability" are considered in this classification. In particular, the "other sustainability" category includes non-finalized operations associated with sustainable covenants/KPIs. These covenants/KPIs must be documentable at the proposal stage and or over the life of the operation and consistent with the classification categories defined in the Rules. Sustainable financing is composed of the three mentioned categories.

² An Energy Community is an association that produces and shares renewable energy to independently generate and manage cost-effective green energy while sharply reducing CO₂ emissions and energy waste. Simple citizens, commercial activities, public administrations and small and medium-sized businesses can be members.