Corporate responsibility

At ING Real Estate we conduct our business on the basis of clearly defined business principles. In all our activities we carefully weigh the interests of our stakeholders: clients, shareholders, employees, regulators, capital providers, business partners and society at large. We pride ourselves on a longstanding culture of accountability, integrity and ethical business practice.

Guided by the ING Group

In pursuing sustainable growth and managing for value, we aim to consistently exceed our clients’ expectations without compromising our business principles. We comply with ING Group's business principles, which define the standards of behaviour required by all ING employees as well as our commitments towards key stakeholders.

Responsible business practice

Our clients

We are committed to building long-term relationships with our clients around the world by providing outstanding service. Strengthening client relationships is one of our strategic objectives. Client trust is driven by many factors and among other things depends on how easy we are to deal with, how responsive we are to clients’ needs, whether we fullfil our promises and whether we treat our clients fairly.

Sustainability

In 2008 we formalised a policy that underlines our commitment to sustainability. The policy defines our vision, ambition, themes and principles and is aligned with ING Group’s Corporate Social Responsibility Policy. The policy serves as a sustainability framework for our business.

We have adopted the ‘People, Planet and Profit’ principle to identify the key role of real estate in relation to sustainability. We believe that this captures the inextricable relationship between economic performance (profit), environmental protection (planet) and social consciousness (people). We are therefore committed to balancing and aligning all three aspects when practicing sustainability.

Sustainability themes and principles

We have identified a number of sustainability themes that are relevant to real estate. These are based on current and anticipated statutory requirements, current knowledge about the impact of real estate as well as market demand for sustainability as experienced by our offices around the globe.

• Energy use and climate change
• Water use and management
• Waste reduction and management
• Functional adaptability and physical longevity
• Location and accessibility
• Health and safety
• Appeal to occupants
• Sustainable urbanism

The priority and relevance of these sustainability criteria for ING Real Estate varies across our business, property sectors and regions according to differences in stakeholder demands, business needs, real estate characteristics as well as the degree of influence by decision makers.

We have adopted the following sustainability principles:

• We believe sustainable real estate will deliver above average returns
• We gather proof and collect evidence of the value of sustainable real estate
• We aim for thought leadership on sustainability
• We promote categorising real estate-based sustainability aspects
• We are open and clear on our sustainability achievements
• We incorporate sustainability in our core processes

Investing

We are committed to integrating sustainable property investment (SPI) practices (SPI) into our daily business routine. In addition to the mitigation of our own environmental footprint, we recognise the need to invest in properties that reduce the adverse effects on the environment. As we are a global business with operations across four continents, we have clients with sustainability requirements that are as diverse as the local markets in which we operate. Ultimately the guiding principle for our SPI policy is to actively engage our clients and other stakeholders in pursuing greater sustainability.

Developing

In 2008 we defined a comprehensive sustainability framework for our development activities with the following objectives:

• To achieve recognition as a sustainable developer in all local markets.
• To achieve a ranking among the top 25% of the peer group in each local market for sustainability performance.
• To incorporate at least two sustainable development projects in 2009 in the portfolio of each country of operation.

We apply six sustainability criteria to our development projects: sustainable urbanism, location and accessibility, energy and water, adapability, longevity and appeal to occupants.

Charitable activities

We support the Chances for Children programme run by ING Group together with UNICEF, which is designed to provide children in Brazil, Ethiopia and India with access to primary education. We carried out several initiatives in 2008, including a lottery to raise funds for the programme.