Banca Etica Group
The Banca Etica Group offers complementary financial and cultural, environmental and human promotion services.
Saving from individual to common good
The Banca Etica Group regards savings as an individual good that can contribute to the common good of the community.
With this vision, saving is valuable on two levels:
- Personal, because by setting aside resources, a person is ensuring that they can cope with future needs or projects.
- Social, by becoming a common good, because this wealth, while remaining individual, can be circulated in the form of loans to people and organisations that need it through financial intermediation. This is why we provide non-speculative investment opportunities for savings aimed at protecting purchasing power and lending to companies that operate for the common good, encouraging responsible behaviour, including through active and critical shareholder ownership and responsible behaviour.
(From Banca Etica Manifesto)
For more information please visit www.bancaetica.it.
Banca Etica
Banca Etica is the Parent Company. Formed in March 1999, it was the first ethical financial institution in Italy, aiming to finance social cooperation, environmental protection and civil society and to support the non-profit world and the solidarity economy.
An innovative bank, the only one in Italy to base all of its operational and cultural activities on the principles of ethical finance: transparency, right of access to credit, efficiency and attention to the non-economic consequences of economic actions.
This is in order to manage deposit taking and the granting of credit by directing these activities towards socio-economic initiatives capable of pursuing social goals with full respect for human dignity and nature. Banca Etica, the head of the Banca Etica Group, now has 17 branches in Italy and a widespread network of door-to-door bankers (financial advisors authorised to sell offsite) throughout the national territory.
CreSud
CreSud is the Banca Etica Group company that provides financial resources and support services to microfinance organisations, fair and sustainable trade producers, cooperatives, networks, associations and NGOs in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
CreSud was established in 1999 and developed through a network of shareholders comprising people, cooperatives and associations operating in the fields of sustainable development and fair trade. CreSud has been part of the Banca Etica Group since October 2019.
The Banca Etica Network
The Banca Etica Network includes the Banca Etica Group and the Ethical Finance Foundation. The Network is part of a wider global movement characterised by its determination to promote and implement “meaningful” initiatives, understood as projects around which people, associations, organisations gather and work together, to respond to the challenges that humanity currently faces: the fight against exclusion, poverty and processes of social degeneration, unemployment, environmental protection, North/South relations, a fairer distribution of the wealth and resources of the planet.
Ethical finance foundation
The Ethical Finance Foundation is an entity forming part of the Banca Etica network. It was established in 2003 and operates both nationally and internationally in order to spread the principles of Ethical Finance.
The Foundation actively contributes to the debate on finance issues for a cultural reform of finance and the credit system with a view to social ethics and utility in the social and environmental fields. It also promotes the founding principles and criteria of a more informed and responsible use of money and provides advocacy and networking to highlight the problems of the economic and financial system and raise awareness among citizens, institutions and businesses of the non-economic consequences of economic activities.
The Ethical Finance Foundation is convinced of the need for a substantial revision of the current economic model in favour of an economy capable of successfully managing its environmental and social limits.
All the activities carried out in recent years have been oriented towards this goal.
For more information please visit finanzaetica.info.