Lloyds ramps up sustainability support for SMEs

Lloyds TSB Commercial’s 'Key to Sustainability’ online service launched this week and offers any small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) help with greening its operations and creating a sustainability policy to win new business. Simon Featherstone, managing director, Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance, told GreenWise the bank was also planning a nationwide programme of 100 sustainability business seminars for its SME customers this year. It will also train up a further 300 of its commercial relationship managers to be sustainability experts by the end of 2011.

"Our SME customers have been telling us they want more information, more help and more support in becoming greener and winning new business. That’s why we’ve designed this new service on our website," said Featherstone.

Bank bonuses and restricted lending mean UK banks have been struggling to regain the confidence of the public and small businesses ever since the recession. Featherstone said Lloyds Banking Group wanted to be seen "as a force for good" among SME businesses and providing advice and support in the sustainability space was one way of doing this.

"It's a sign of Lloyds’s commitment to the whole sustainability agenda that we have opened up our website service to all businesses. We hope that non-customers will see it as a positive thing about Lloyds. We certainly know that no other bank has done it," he said.

Key to Sustainability service
The new service can be found on Lloyds TSB’s small business website, where users who click on the 'Key to Sustainability’ button are taken to a page where they can follow a sustainability action plan, sign up to one of Lloyds TSB’s seminars or create their own business sustainability statement by using a specially designed tool. Sustainability statements or policies are seen as key to any business looking to win contracts in the public sector and increasingly in the private sector, where large companies are beginning to 'green’ their supply chains.

Training managers
A 'map’ on the site provides names, contact details and locations of specially trained Lloyds TSB managers around the country. Last year, the bank trained up 300 managers with help from the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and this year it aims to deliver the same number again. Featherstone, himself a 'Champion’ for sustainability across the SME segment of Lloyds TSB, said the bank planned to have all 2000 Lloyds TSB commercial relationship managers trained up within the next three years.

"We are only successful if our customers are successful and that means embracing the sustainability agenda," said Featherstone. "Through pursuing our own sustainability programme we’ve realised that we can bring that expertise to a greater number of SME customers."

Last year, Paul Turner, head of Sustainable Development at Lloyds Banking Group, told GreenWise he wanted "to build sustainability into the DNA of every [business] manager right across the bank."