Beginning with Mr. Poonsit Wongthawatchai, Krungsri Executive Vice President, Head of Environmental, Social, and Governance Division, shared how important ESG was to the businesses. Placing an emphasis on ESG can help businesses survive and can increase competitive edges. ESG is a megatrend that consumers, society and stakeholders are concerned and placing high expectation on businesses. These days, it is important for organizations to be prepared on ESG impacts. With regard to the banking industry, there are financial supports on ESG for business in every scale, such as ESG bonds, crowdfunding via sustainable funds as ESG Fund, special loans that support ESG-related projects such as solar rooftop loans or products that focus on digital technology, reducing paper works and travels, which in turn can help reduce the use of environmental resources.
Prof. Singh Intrachooto, Head of Creative Center for Eco-Design, Building Technology Division, Faculty of Architecture, Kasetsart University and Chief Advisor, the Research & Innovation for Sustainability Center (RISC) shared the concept of resilience that could apply to sustainability in modern businesses. He suggested that due to the future's uncertainty, organizations had to look beyond sustainability, and instead should focus more on resilience that could help organizations adapt to endless changes. The ability to bounce back faster, better and stronger is crucial for businesses. At least, three key areas for organizations to prepare are nature & environment disasters, living & infrastructure and inequality in society & economy. Organizations should start with considering specific issues related to their businesses first and adapt innovation to help tackle such issues.
Professor Apitan Lee, Deputy Director, Research and Design Service Center KMUTT (REDEK) also shared how to adapt innovation culture to build an organization with sustainable and simple culture for SMEs. Basically, innovations were created to solve organizations' pain points. In order to create innovations in response to ESG, it does not have to be relied on technology or product development, but it is possible to create innovations on processes and customer experiences and other areas to respond to ESG as well. To have the successful innovation culture, it is crucial that leaders are willing to listen, able to make the ideas tangible and ready to learn from mistakes. In order to create innovation that responds to ESG, we can begin with these 3 factors; people - how can we contribute to the society constructively, planet - how can we minimize the impacts to the environment, and profits - do we have the fair trade in place.
Based on the Bank's ESG mission, ranging from financial supports to society and sustainability projects, helping customers achieve their goals in reducing greenhouse gas emissions via investment and restructuring business process to be environmentally friendly, Krungsri is committed to be the trusted partner for customers. The Bank is willing to support customers to move forward to sustainable growth via its knowledge-sharing activities and help customers realize new business opportunities in a form of seminars. Entrepreneurs can view the rerun of the seminar at https://bit.ly/3xLmbQt
Source: Bank of Ayudhya