The Awareness of Digitisation in Strategic Sustainabilty Reporting in Banking

Today's financial services industry is making a digital transition, especially when itcomes to banking. Due to changing market conditions and stricter legal requirements forinformation duties to stakeholders, this paper focuses on the analysis of mandatory sustainablereporting with a specific focus on strategy. In particular, the perception of a changing marketenvironment through digitisation in the banking sector will be analysed and interpreted. Theframework of the Sustainability Code forms the basis of the analysis. Design/methodology/approach: Firstly, quantitative content analysis of n = 114 sustainabilityreports and, secondly, regression analysis of a total of 1410 codes related to digitisation werechosen as appropriate research methods. Keyword analysis deals with the analysis ofsustainability reports of the German Sustainability Code and its four strategic criteria. Theseare searched and coded for the keyword 'digital'. Based on this, a regression analysis will becarried out following the respective coded sustainability reports. Findings: The findings revealed that, within the legally mandated sustainable reportingrequirements, banks are partially, and not fully, concerned with reporting on digitisation. Itturns out that the focus is on three out of four strategy criteria of the Sustainability Code.Strategical analysis methods are neglected, whereas Materiality, Objectives the Depth of theValue Chain issues receive increased attention. Research/practical implications: With regards to digitisation, the paper identifies a thematicimbalance within strategic sustainable reporting. It turns out that topics are not fully consideredand addressed in a reporting approach prescribed by law, and that there is a high degree offreedom in the information duty to stakeholders. Originality/value: Since sustainable reporting has only recently become mandatory and it isa comparably new reporting approach, this paper focuses on precisely these and makesa contribution to the analysis and further development of the German Sustainability Code andthe associated legal approaches.