Spar Nord Bank A/S

Spar Nord's climate ambition and transition plan for climate change have been approved by the bank's Board of Directors, while the Executive Board has overall responsibility for tracking targets and actions. Annual reports on the progress made with the bank's climate plan are issued along with the annual financial statements. [...] To ensure that Spar Nord's climate ambition is executed successfully, the bank has established a governance structure with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. A series of supporting policies and guidelines have also been implemented to ensure continuous progress on our path to net zero. **Organisational anchoring** At Spar Nord, the bank's strategic work on climate change is anchored in its Board of Directors and Executive Board, which continually oversee and approve efforts to ensure progress with the bank's climate ambition and strategic direction and thereby ultimately support the bank's climate plan. To generate maximum involvement and ownership across the organisation, the bank has established an ESG Steering Committee that discusses sustainability issues in general, including specific actions and measures related to climate change. Spar Nord's CEO is the chairman of the ESG Steering Committee, which is also composed of directors from relevant business areas. The ESG Steering Committee's quarterly meetings are held to discuss the status of priority measures and relevant attention points. The ESG Steering Committee has a mandate to make decisions that help ensure a continuous focus on activities to mitigate and adapt to climate change across the bank. Responsibility for implementing climate-related development tasks and climate change priorities rests to a large extent with the bank's individual business areas, which have the necessary authority to develop and execute the relevant climate targets in practice. The ESG and Sustainability division acts as a liaison between the ESG Steering Committee and the business, ensuring ongoing cooperation and coordination, as well as supporting strategy and the decentralised anchoring of climate-related activities within the bank. Spar Nord has also appointed a Responsible Investment Committee and a Sustainable Financing Committee, in which the bank's Executive Board is represented together with directors from relevant business units. The committees review and recommend concrete actions to ensure that progress is made on executing the bank's climate-related targets and sub-targets. The committees are also responsible for maintaining and updating the bank's financing and investment exclusion lists.

ESG-organisering ESG is a shared responsibility at Spar Nord This means that sustainability is an integrated part of both operations and business development throughout the Bank, and each individual employee plays a vital role in making sure the Bank can support customers in a green transition of either their finances or business. At Spar Nord, the ESG area is inherently anchored with our senior management team, with maximum use of our core organisation through an ESG steering group. Responsibility for development tasks, prioritisation and reporting on sustainability is strongly anchored in individual business areas at the Bank. Clearly this places demands on collaboration and coordination across the Bank, and this is secured through quarterly meetings of the ESG steering group, which discusses the status of initiatives and relevant areas for attention. The ESG steering group has a mandate to make decisions that help to ensure that ESG continues to be integrated across the Bank and that action is anchored in the relevant business areas which have the required skills sets and insights to further develop and implement current sustainability goals. Board of Directors Executive Board ESG steering group Responsible Sustainable Governance Local Our own footprint investment finance og compliance commitment (climate etc.) ESG Officer [...] On a quarterly basis, Spar Nord's ESG steering group follows up on initiatives and goals in close cooperation with the core organisation, deciding on supportive measures required on an ongoing process. Spar Nord's Board of Directors receives regular status updates on the specific targets and other ESG-related initiatives and has sustainability on the agenda at meetings at least once a year.

In 2023, Spar Nord set up a Committee for Sustainable Financing, which, among other things, will ensure action to realise the reduction targets set. [...] In 2023, Spar Nord Bank has worked to demonstrate the feasibility of the reduction targets through various initiatives.[7] In this context, the Bank has set up a committee for sustainable financing, including the Bank's Executive Board and directors from relevant business units which, together and across the organisation will launch specific actions to help ensure that Spar Nord realises the reduction targets it has set.