BankTrack today releases its Annual Report for 2015, detailing its work and achievements in tracking banks, campaigning and NGO support, over its first full year since converting from the secretariat of a network of organisations to an independent NGO in its own right.

"One year on, we remain convinced that relaunching as an independent organisation was a good move: the new BankTrack has been more energetic than ever before, pushing forward campaigns on issues from climate change to human rights to forest protection," said Johan Frijns, BankTrack's Director.

Seven highlights from 2015 are identified in the report.

1. The Paris Pledge to Quit Coal wins massive support: Our main campaign of 2015 was the "Paris Pledge" campaign for all banks to pledge, in time for the Paris climate summit, to phase out finance for the coal sector. 21 ethical banks got on board, showing the larger ‘coal banks' that it can be done, and 160 groups added their voices to the call.
2. Global banks start to take steps away from coal: While only smaller banks signed the Paris Pledge, across the sector there was the beginning of what we hope becomes a significant shift away from coal in the banking sector. We showed the state of progress in The Coal Test report.
3. APRIL committed to stop rainforest destruction: Santander and ABN AMRO, the two biggest European banks financing Indonesian pulp and paper giant APRIL, walked away from the company in Spring, following pressure from BankTrack and allies, including a major Greenpeace petition. In June APRIL caved to the pressure and called an immediate end to logging in natural forests.
4. Bank human rights failures were debated at the UN: The UN cited BankTrack research when it decided to debate the issue of the finance sector's responsibility to remedy human rights impacts at the UN Forum for Business and Human Rights in Geneva. Panellists all agreed on the need for greater progress from the finance sector as a whole.
5. Four banks pull back from Mountaintop Removal: PNC, Barclays, Natixis and ING all announced new commitments to stop finance for destroying mountains for coal in 2015, adding to a growing roster of banks that refuse to support this hugely destructive industry.
6. More banks commit to steer clear of Australian "carbon bomb": Standard Chartered and Commonwealth Bank became the latest banks to withdraw from their roles in the Carmichael coal mine project in Australia's as-yet-unexploited Galilee Basin,  one of the world's largest "carbon bomb" projects, and the three largest French banks went even further, committing to not finance any coal projects in the Galilee Basin region.
7. BankTrack covered in The Economist, Nature and WIRED: Our work was featured in some big-hitting publications in 2015: the journal Nature Climate Change compared BankTrack data on coal finance with green bond issuances; we appeared in The Economist drawing attention to bank support for coal; and tech magazine WIRED talked about our work as an example of public shaming making the world a better place.

For more details on all these highlights, and the rest of our 2015 activities, download the 18-page PDF here.