| Website | http://www.dzbank.com/ |
| Headquarters |
Platz der Republik
60265 Frankfurt am Main Hessen
Germany
|
| CEO/chair |
Uwe Fröhlich and Cornelius Riese co-CEOs |
| Supervisor | |
| Ownership |
DZ BANK is the central institution of the Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken Cooperative Financial Network and the central bank for more than 700 cooperative banks in Germany, in which it holds a majority interest. |
DZ Bank, founded in 2001, is the second largest bank in Germany by assets, and acts as the central banking institution for more than 700 cooperative banks. It is part of the Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken co-operative network, one of Germany's largest private sector financial institutions. In this network DZ Bank functions as a central institution. The DZ Bank Group includes DVB Bank, a transportation finance bank; Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall, a building society; DG HYP, a provider of real estate finance; DZ PRIVATBANK Gruppe; R+V Versicherung, an insurance company; TeamBank, a provider of consumer finance; Union Investment Group, an asset management company; VR LEASING; and other institutions.
DZ Bank's most important sustainability commitments can be found at the website sections listed below.
DZ Bank is linked to a number of companies and projects that BankTrack considers controversial (so called Dodgy Deals), e.g. as a current or past financier or through an expression of interest. The profiles below provide more details on the nature of DZ Bank's link to these deals.
The 2022 Banking on Climate Chaos report showed that DZ Bank provided US$ 1.63 Billion in financing to the fossil fuel industry between 2016 and 2021. Find further details on DZ Bank fossil fuel portfolio and how it compares to other large banks globally on Fossil Banks No Thanks and in the Banking on Climate Chaos report.
Reclaim Finance tracks the coal, oil and gas policies of financial institutions, including banks, in the Coal Policy Tracker and Oil and Gas Policy Tool. Find further details on their assessment of DZ Bank fossil fuel policy below.
BankTrack assessed DZ Bank in its 2022 Global Human Rights Benchmark, where it achieved 1.5 points out of 14 and was ranked as a laggard. In addition, DZ Bank scored 0.8 out of 3 on how it responds to alleged human rights violations linked to its finance, which were raised by civil society organisations. More information is detailed in the "Accountability" section of this profile.
A bank can obtain a total of 10 points for the quality of its policies. The total score is based on their scores per sector, weighted against their financing and investment for each sector. For further details on this see here. Based on their overall score, banks are then classified as Laggards, Followers, Front runners or Leaders, as follows:
A bank can obtain a total of 10 points for the quality of its beef policy. The total score is based on their scores per sector, weighted against their financing and investment for each sector. For further details on this see here. Based on their overall score, banks are then classified as Laggards, Followers, Front runners or Leaders, as follows:
A bank can obtain a total of 10 points for the quality of its palm oil policy. The total score is based on their scores per sector, weighted against their financing and investment for each sector. For further details on this see here. Based on their overall score, banks are then classified as Laggards, Followers, Front runners or Leaders, as follows:
DZ Bank has not established any complaints or grievance mechanisms able to address human rights concerns and open to individual and communities who might be adversely affected by its financing activities. It is however possible to lodge a complaint with the OECD National Contact point (see OECD Watch Guidance).
This page evaluates DZ Bank's responses to instances of alleged human rights violations linked to its finance, raised by civil society organisations. It is not intended to be exhaustive, but covers selected impacts raised by BankTrack and other civil society partners since 2016. For the full scoring methodology, see here. For more information about BankTrack's evaluation of bank responses to human rights impacts, see the 2021 report "Actions speak louder: assessing bank responses to human rights violations".
