Today, BankTrack unveils a new set of bank policy assessments on its website. The policy assessments, covering the fossil fuel finance policies of 49 banks, use a new format which will now be rolled out for BankTrack's upcoming policy assessments. This will allow for easier comparison of banks' progress in different campaign areas, from climate and energy to forests and human rights.

The new policy pages assess the fossil fuel policies of each bank covered, scoring them on their investment policies for the tar sands, Arctic oil & gas, offshore oil & gas, fracked oil & gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG), coal mining and coal power sectors, plus exclusion of fossil fuel expansion projects. Based on these scores, banks are then labeled as laggard, follower, front runner or leader in each category assessed.

The pages also include new tables indicating which banks have fully or partially excluded finance for projects and/or companies within each sector. As such, these pages provide an up-to-date overview of which banks have now heeded the call of BankTrack’s ‘Fossil Banks No Thanks’ campaign to put an end to their support for the fossil fuel sector.

The fossil fuel policy scores were originally sourced from the Banking on Climate Change report by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Reclaim Finance, and the Sierra Club, but have been updated to include policy updates made by banks since the release of this report in March 2020.

The assessments directly link to the relevant investment policies of each bank, while all findings are also presented on the ‘policy assessment’ section on the profile of each bank. While the new bank assessment tool for now only covers fossil fuel policies, all upcoming policy assessments of BankTrack will be published in the same easy to navigate format. Earlier BankTrack research on the quality of bank human rights policies has already been integrated into the new format.

“With pressure mounting on banks to take further steps in limiting their finance for fossil fuels we now see banks announcing new or strengthened policies almost on a weekly basis. This new web tool allows us to properly track and value such steps from banks, and communicate our findings directly to the public. We expect the new pages to become an important reference for banks, analysts and climate campaigners alike”, says Johan Frijns, director of BankTrack.

For questions or comments, please contact climate@banktrack.org.