Since 2007, SustainAbility has:

• Advised Standard Chartered on the identification and exploration of long-term sustainability trends most likely to have material impact on the bank’s operating environment and business model (2007-08);
• Designed and facilitated the development of Standard Chartered’s Environment Vision and Strategy with the company’s executive level Environment Committee (2008); and,
• Supported the bank’s exploration of ways to measure social impacts of their operations in different regions (2009-10).

At the outset of our relationship, Standard Chartered was a century-and-a-half old and seeking assistance in exploration of the ways sustainability would be critical to ensuring the success of the organization “for the next 150 years.” In 2007-08, SustainAbility worked with Standard Chartered’s London-based internal sustainability team, as well as a group of high-potential staff from all regions of the bank’s operations, to identify which sustainability mega-trends would have greatest impact on the bank over the next 15-20 years. The mega-trends, selected from an initial field of several dozen, were used as the basis for a strategy workshop facilitated by SustainAbility in Singapore, which fed Board-level recommendations as to how the short-listed mega-trends would create opportunities and risks for Standard Chartered’s business – and how the bank might begin to address them. This futures / mega-trends work also provided part of the underlying intellectual framework used in strategy recommendations to the bank’s Environment Committee later in 2008, and for ongoing work with Standard Chartered on social impact measurement in 2009-10.