Standard Bank Group follows a rigorous process when appointing its directors to ensure that they have the necessary skills and experience to provide independent leadership and oversight of the organisation, and act in the best interests of the group.

To this end, the Standard Bank Group remains of the view that its non-executive directors continue to carry out their fiduciary responsibilities to the organisation in an exemplary manner. They are valuable members of the Board, and any potential conflicts of interests arising from their current or past affiliations to the energy sector are appropriately governed as also set out in our published Management of Conflicts of Interests Policy.

Standard Bank is committed to inclusive and sustainable human development and recognises that climate change is a material risk to Africa's development. As a founding signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Banking, we understand that there is an important role that banks must play in ensuring a just transition to a lower-carbon economy.

As such, the group will set and publish science-basedshort-term,medium-term and long- term climate targets to support meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and the goal of net-zero carbon by 2050. We will start with the material sectors that are reported on in our latest TCFD Report (which are oil & gas, thermal power, coal mining, renewables, and agriculture). Our approach to climate-target setting is based on support for a just transition and the need to address Africa's energy deficit. The annual publication of action plans and reports towards achieving our targets will allow our stakeholders to track our progress.

To meet these commitments, a climate-target setting framework is being implemented and progress will be overseen by the Board. The framework, climate strategy, and first set of climate targets will be included in the 2021 reporting to shareholders.

Additional information

More detail on our approach to ESG is available in our annual Report to Society, the ESG Report and Governance Report. The group's board appointment process is outlined in the 2020 Governance Report pg 23, while the approach to managing conflicts of interest is on pg 20. Please visit https://www.standardbank.com/sbg/standard-bankgroup/who-we-are/corporate-governance.

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Standard Bank Group Ltd. published this content on 25 May 2021 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 31 May 2021 12:23:01 UTC.