Sustainable vs. not sustainable cooperative banks business model: The case of {GBCI} and the authority view

Sustainable finance has become a common lexicon of both supervisors and financial institutions in the last years also due to the COVID-19 crisis. Undoubtedly, the application of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) factors is currently designing a new strategic perspective, a new approach to business usually named “sustainable”. The paper’s research problem is related to the reengineering of the bank’s business model on sustainability. Integrate ESG factors within the decision-making process will not be enough for the European financial sector; it will be strategic that European authorities and regulators also ensure incentives in this direction. In this perspective, the paper has the purpose to answer the following questions: “How sustainable the business model of cooperative credit banks is and how they are ESG oriented?”, “What are the possible ways, in the prudential framework, to foster a higher attention to the ESG paradigm, in the bank’s business model?”. The research methodology used analyses of a) the main features of cooperative bank systems and the sustainability of their business model and the conceptual benchmark framework used by EBA in the 2020 survey; b) the case of Iccrea Sustainability Framework. The contribution of our paper is manifold and likely to raise the interest of policymakers. Our argumentations and conclusions are likely to contribute in terms of recognition of the sustainable business model also in the prudential framework in the current COVID-19 economy.