Communication and stakeholders

Dialogue with stakeholders

As a bank and direct agency of the German federal government, we have many stakeholders.

Communicating with stakeholders and being transparent with them is very important to us. To achieve this goal at all times, we updated our stakeholder analysis in 2023. The analysis is focused on aspects such as the influence, participation, impairment, and interests of potential stakeholders. The following stakeholder groups were identified and confirmed by the Management Board in alphabetical order:  

• Chambers of Commerce and associations
• Employees
• (General) public
• Internal and external boards
• Investors, analysts, issuers
• Job applicants
• Local banks and on-lending institutions, federal state development banks
• Ministries/government
• Rating agencies (credit and sustainability ratings)
• Suppliers and service providers
• Ultimate borrowers
• Universities
  
  

In addition, the following important channels of communication with stakeholders were identified:

• We communicate directly with officials in government ministries, discussing the existing requirements for promotional programmes and possibilities for designing our own promotional programmes. Because our loans are issued by local banks who deal with their customers in person, we also communicate with them directly and elicit feedback from them.
• We present our promotional programmes to our business partners, borrowers, and agriculture specialists at banks and savings banks in workshops, seminars, and presentations, discuss our programmes with them, and determine their needs.
• We sponsor guest presentations to rais awareness among students of agricultural sciences, who we consider to be the future decision makers in this sector, to the issues of agriculture financing.
• We present our bank to a broad audience of stakeholders at trade fairs and other events. We live up to our claim of supporting companies in all phases by serving as a jury member in start-up contests.
• We regularly exchange views and information on the subject of sustainable finance, as well as the resulting impacts on agricultural banking and design possibilities, with representatives of the farming and banking communities.
• We provide wide-ranging information to organisations such as local banks, lending banks, the federal states’ development banks, ultimate borrowers, and job applicants, as well as the general public, about Rentenbank, its services, and its values on our website. We also provide financial information particularly for analysts and investors.
• We communicate with our employees in various different channels, including the intranet, telephone and video conferences with employees, and our internal podcast.
  
  

Initiatives and memberships

Rentenbank is a member of the Association of German Public Banks (Bundesverband Öffentlicher Banken Deutschlands, VÖB) and the European Association of Public Banks (EAPB). The VÖB represents the interests of its members in relation to the legislative bodies of the German federal and state governments, national and international supervisory and regulatory authorities, and the media and public at large. Through its work on the committees, Rentenbank participates in the VÖB’s policy-making work on the subject of all key lending and regulatory issues, as well as the issue of Sustainable Finance. The EAPB represents the interests of public banks in the European framework.

We are also active in boards of trustees such as that of the Andreas Hermes Academy, and in the expert committees and working groups of the German Farmers’ Association and the German Agricultural Society (Deutsche Landwirtschaftsgesellschaft, DLG).

Rentenbank is a member of the Green Bond Principles of the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) and a Diversity Charter signatory. As of 2024, it is also a member of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF).

Rentenbank published a document which serves as a guide to help the lending banks classify the greenhouse gas emissions of agricultural enterprises and systematically assess transition risks and ESG aspects. It was developed in collaboration with agriculture trade associations to ensure that their challenges are met. Conceived as a practical instrument, the functional concept provides background information, along with nine qualitative questions, to aid in the classification of borrowers. A number of banks have since taken to using the questions set out in the document to assess the individual risks associated with the emissions activity of their agricultural customers.

The WALD Initiative (Weltweite Allianz für Landschaftsbasierte Dekarbonisierung, Worldwide Alliance for Forest-based Decarbonisation) is a joint initiative of Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank and KfW. The goal of the initiative is to mobilise private capital to strengthen and preserve natural eco-systems. To this end, the climate protection value of eco-systems is highlighted and companies are encouraged to support them. A key objective is to promote market mechanisms that reward the climate performance of German eco-systems. In the first step, support is given to forestries with the aim of establishing climate-resilient and biodiverse forests. This activity is carried out in the voluntary carbon market, which is currently unregulated in Germany. Support is given in the form of voluntary financial contributions to promote climate protection (“contribution claims”). 

In August 2022, moreover, we joined a consortium whose members include Klim GmbH and K+S AG, among other companies, to develop a -DIN-SPEC. This preliminary step to establishing a DIN standard bears the title “Quantification and Assessment of Organic Carbon Capture and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Change from the Adapted Use of Agricultural Soil and Land”. The objective was to steer the many existing private-sector initiatives in the same direction, render them comparable, and develop constructive solution proposals for national and European-level debates. The framework produced as a result of this work was published in November 2024.