KUALA LUMPUR, July 23 (Bernama) -- Citi was named Best Bank for Corporate Responsibility in Asia by Euromoney in their recent annual awards. 
 
The editorial award recognizes a bank’s commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion; reducing the environmental impact of operations; promoting workforce development and social mobility; and innovative and effective initiatives to strengthen local communities in which banks are domiciled. 
 
“Citi is committed to building a more diverse, inclusive and sustainable future. This award is excellent recognition of everything we do to support our clients and communities to generate positive change,” said Peter Babej, Citi Asia Pacific CEO.
 
The award recognized Citi’s important work in these areas over the last year:
 
In September, 2020, Citi Asia Pacific and the Citi Foundation announced a collective commitment of US$35 million in philanthropic investments to advance economic opportunities and employability for youth from low-income and underserved communities in the region by 2023. In addition, the bank will offer 6,000 jobs and 60,000 job skills training opportunities for young people at Citi Asia over the next three years.
 
In 2020, Citi Foundation invested over $10.2 million in 39 community programs across Asia Pacific, focusing on Pathways to Progress, Financial Inclusion and Community Solutions. In addition, the businesses in Asia Pacific contributed $14.4 million to support community projects and events. 
 
To date, Citi and Citi Foundation has contributed over $23.86 million in supporting COVID-19-related recovery efforts across the region to deliver ongoing relief and support for recovery in communities impacted by the pandemic.
 
Co-led by the Citi Foundation and the UNDP, Youth Co:Lab was scaled to 25 countries and territories across Asia Pacific in 2020 – It’s the largest youth-led social entrepreneurship movement in Asia. Youth Co:Lab takes an ecosystem approach. The program has built a regional multi-stakeholder alliance with 192 partners across different sectors. It has supported over 75,000 youth participants through different forums - national dialogues, regional summits, social innovation challenges and a springboard program. Over 8,000 young social entrepreneurs have benefited from the program and it has helped to launch or improve over 1,000 youth-led social enterprises. 
 
27,900+ Citi employees along with their families and friends volunteered for Citi’s 2020 Global Community Day. 
 
In Malaysia, almost 2000 employees volunteered for Global Community Day in over 15 group activities covering ten NGOs this year. Citi Malaysia’s leadership in community engagement through Citi Foundation has seen Citi pioneer social engagement over the last 10 years with community stakeholders in urban transformation, financial education and the development of young entrepreneurs in the country. 
 
In the area of Youth Entrepreneurship, Citi Malaysia is in its third year of partnership with the Asia School of Business supporting The Rapid Youth Success Entrepreneurship (RYSE) Program to improve youth unemployment rates in urban Malaysia. Low income students from community colleges in the country are taught innovation and design thinking by the Asia School of Business team in addition to social entrepreneurship skills and e-commerce. 
 
Over the last seven years, Citi Malaysia through Citi Foundation has partnered with Think City, a subsidiary of Khazanah Nasional Berhad. This community-based urban regeneration body seeks to create more sustainable and livable cities. Think City’s Culture Based Urban Regeneration Programme served as a platform to promote urban sustainability, best practices and diverse aspects of urban regeneration to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, Think City activated the Covid-19 response plan to support urban poor communities, including migrant workers and B40 households impacted by COVID-19. 
 
 
Notes to editors 
 
Over 50% of our staff in Asia are female and as we have stated publically, our goal is improve the representation of women globally in Assistant Vice President to Managing Director level roles to at least 40% globally by the end of 2021. 
 
Consistent with Citi’s inclusive culture, Employee Network chapters serve as local branches of our Affinity Groups and are initiated, led by and open to all employees. They offer professional development, mentoring, networking and community engagement opportunities to members and colleagues. In 2020, the number of Networks increased to 29 in Asia Pacific including across the Citi Women’s Network, Families Matter Network and Generations Network.

During the course of the last 12 months, we achieved our global environmental impact goals – sourcing renewable electricity for 100% of facilities in the region. We achieved this through sourcing regional International Renewable Electricity Certificates (i-RECs) and in HK we continued to participate in the HK energy certification scheme where Citi was one of the original participants in the programme first launched in 2019.
 
We initiated our onsite renewable electricity plant at our regional HQ, Citi Tower HK on 22nd March 2021.  We installed 360 solar panels, which are forecasted to produce 85,337 kilowatt-hours of renewable electricity equivalent to the annual energy consumption of 20 households. The rooftop Installation also includes a wind turbine, which generates electricity on-site for local use.
 
The editorial write up announcing the award is attached.

About Citi  
Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.
 
Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com | Twitter: @Citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Blog: http://blog.citigroup.com | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi.
 
 
SOURCE : Citibank Berhad

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Name : Sara Yasmine Mohamed
Tel : +60122160022
Email : sara.yasmine.mohamed@citi.com
 
--BERNAMA