Canada NewsWire
TORONTO
, March 10, 2025 /CNW/ – CIBC (TSX: CM) (NYSE: CM) today released its annual environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures that include the 2024 Sustainability Report and Public Accountability Statement, and the 2024 Climate Report. The disclosures provide a progress update on CIBC’s ESG strategy and outline how the bank is helping to drive positive change toward a more sustainable future.
“Banks play an integral role in fostering economic growth while enabling a more sustainable future, and our team is committed to playing our part,” said Victor Dodig, CIBC President and CEO. “Our bank is working alongside our clients to support their sustainability ambitions and those of future generations.”
Key highlights from the reports include:
Building integrity and trust:
- Continued to advance adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and their governance and risk management processes across our business. This included the creation of an Enterprise AI Governance Office, and the introduction of several GenAI pilot programs, including the CIBC AI platform, which provides team members access to AI tools in a secure environment.
- Broadly recognized for our mobile banking services, acknowledging CIBC for its client experience, innovative features, security, and ease of use. These include ranking #1 overall in Surviscor’s Consumer Mobile Banking Experience, and three shared awards in Ipsos’ 2024 Customer Service Index study.
Creating access to opportunities:
- Provided more than $94 million globally to community investment initiatives, with a focus on supporting persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, and members of the Black community.1
- Completed the first phase of an independent Racial Equity Assessment examining our employment policies and practices in Canada highlighting our notable strengths, and identifying opportunities where we could further enhance our efforts to be more racially equitable and inclusive. Visit our website to read the full report.
- Received the 2025 Catalyst Award, demonstrating global recognition of organizational excellence for inclusion and gender-balanced leadership. This award highlights the success of the bank’s evolved approach to inclusion and underscores our ongoing efforts to build a culture that values each team members’ uniqueness.
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Accelerating climate action:
- We continue to support the development of emissions-free energy. As of October 31st 2024, we have allocated $12.2 billion towards emissions-free power generation financing commitments2.
- Developed Transition Planning Assessment and Engagement Framework, which will be implemented in fiscal 2025, to better understand our clients’ transition planning actions across our oil and gas and power generation portfolios.
- Mobilized $42.5 billion in 2024, achieving a cumulative progress of $199.8 billion toward our goal of $300 billion in sustainable finance by 2030 to help clients achieve their green, social, and decarbonization objectives3
- Recipient of six Global Finance Sustainable Finance Awards in 2024, including Best Investment Bank in Canada; Best Bank for Green Bonds, Global; and Best Bank for Sustainable Bonds, Global; among others.
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“In 2024, we made meaningful progress toward achieving our sustainability ambitions and furthering initiatives across our bank to contribute to a more inclusive and prosperous future,” said Kikelomo Lawal, CIBC Executive Vice-President, Chief Legal Officer and Chair of the Senior Executive ESG Council. “This progress requires collective change through collaboration and partnerships. We continue to build on our momentum and evolve our strategy on the strong foundation of engagement with our clients, team members, communities, and stakeholders.”
For more details, please refer to CIBC’s Sustainability website.
A note about forward-looking statements
From time to time, we make written or oral forward-looking statements within the meaning of certain securities laws, including in this Report, in other filings with Canadian securities regulators or the SEC, and in other communications. All such statements are made pursuant to the “safe harbour” provisions of, and are intended to be forward-looking statements under applicable Canadian and US securities legislation, including the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements in this Report related to our purpose – to help make our clients’ ambitions a reality, priorities, targets, metrics, sustainability commitments and goals (including our $300 billion by 2030 sustainable finance goal, the implementation and update of our Sustainable Finance Methodology, our 2050 net-zero ambition, and reducing operational GHG emissions), as well as our economic and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) related impacts and objectives, including but not limited to, sustainable financing, data ethics, inclusion, employee engagement, making a difference in the community, inclusive banking, and accelerating climate action. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by the words “believe”, “expect”, “anticipate”, “intend”, “estimate”, “forecast”, “target”, “predict”, “commit”, “ambition”, “goal”, “strive”, “project”, “objective”, and other similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as “will”, “may”, “should”, “would”, and “could”. By their nature, these statements require us to make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific, which give rise to the possibility that our predictions, forecasts, projections, expectations, or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that our assumptions may not be correct, and that our priorities, targets, commitments, and goals, and economic and ESG-related impacts and objectives will not be achieved. As we work to advance our ESG goals, external factors outside of CIBC’s reasonable control may act as constraints on achieving these goals. These factors include: trade policies and tensions, including tariffs; inflationary pressures in the U.S.; global supply-chain disruptions; geopolitical risk, including from the war in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East; the occurrence, continuance, or intensification of public health emergencies, such as the impact of post-pandemic hybrid work arrangements, and any related government policies and actions; the failure of third parties to comply with their obligations to us and our affiliates or associates; our ability to implement various sustainability-related initiatives internally and with our clients under expected time frames; our ability to scale our sustainable finance products and services; the availability of comprehensive and high-quality GHG emissions data (including from CIBC’s clients) and standardization of ESG-related measurement methodologies; the evolution of our lending portfolios over time; the need for active and continuing participation, cooperation, and collaboration from various stakeholders (including enterprises, financial institutions, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and individuals); deployment of new technologies and industry-specific solutions; the evolution of consumer behaviour; varying decarbonization efforts across economies; the need for thoughtful climate policies globally; the challenges of balancing interim emissions goals with an orderly transition; and the continuing development and evolution of regulations, guidelines, principles, and frameworks internationally and CIBC’s compliance thereto, which could lead to us to being subject to various legal and regulatory proceedings, the potential outcome of which could include regulatory restrictions, penalties, and fines. These and other factors may cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements and may require CIBC to adapt its initiatives and activities or adjust its commitments, metrics, targets, and goals. The forward-looking statements in this Report are presented for the purpose of assisting clients and others in understanding our objectives and strategic priorities, and may not be appropriate for other purposes. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement except as required by law.
About CIBC
CIBC is a leading North American financial institution with 14 million personal banking, business, public sector and institutional clients. Across Personal and Business Banking, Commercial Banking and Wealth Management, and Capital Markets, CIBC offers a full range of advice, solutions and services through its leading digital banking network, and locations across Canada, in the United States and around the world. Ongoing news releases and more information about CIBC can be found at https://www.cibc.com/en/about-cibc/media-centre.html.
SOURCE CIBC
