Evaluating the sustainability profile of banks: A comprehensive benchmarking analysis in the Italian context

The integration of sustainability factors in banking activities is becoming more urgent and necessary since banks are asked by regulatory and supervisory authorities to integrate Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) components in their risk management and governance frameworks. In literature, there is a lack of studies that assess the sustainability orientation of banks. We tried to fill this literature gap by providing a formal approach to evaluate the sustainability profile of Italian banks against the requirements of Article 111 bis of the National Normative Framework, which defines specific criteria for “sustainable banks”. Exploiting a mixed‐method approach, we analyze banks' compliance with the requirements of Article 111 bis and develop a distance metric that allows us to evaluate the distance of traditional banks from a selected benchmark compliant with Article 111 bis. While our findings reveal that Italian banks fall short of complete compliance with Article 111 bis, positive trends, particularly in sustainable lending, are discernible. Our paper represents an initial reflection on the definition of a sustainable business strategy, identifying crucial aspects that can be considered in harmonizing the bank's transition path to sustainability.