Our vision on sustainable and profitable growth

We want to secure our existence for the long term. We therefore want to build long-term relationships with our clients. This is why we do not aim for high short-term returns that come with excessive risks but rather focus on sustainable and profitable growth in the long run. We respect solid risk, capital and liquidity boundaries in the way we do business. Stringent risk management is key to ensuring this sustainability and to maintaining our focus on real economies.

We are long term focussed

Our financial performance is important, but must above all be sustainable. This means not fixating on short-term returns, but focusing on long-term performance that contributes to sustainable growth.

We focus on real local economies

Sustainable and long-term thinking also means focusing on the real local economies of the core markets in which we operate and that we do not invest, in principle, in exotic projects far beyond these markets. Speculative trading activities are likewise limited.

Sustainable and long-term thinking also means that we go beyond pure financial operations and deliver initiatives that offer genuine, long-term support for the local economies in which we operate. The ‘Start it’ project in Belgium is an excellent example in this regard. We launched Start it @kbc in 2013 in response to the fact that the cost and other difficulties of creating a new business has been one of the main reasons for the decline in the number of start-ups in Flanders. The aim here is for KBC, together with a number of partners, to help start-ups with various aspects of doing business, such as making contacts and developing a network.

We are committed in the long term in our core countries

We view our presence in all our core countries as a long-term commitment. We are not planning to increase our geographical footprint or to alter it significantly. We want to further optimise our current geographical presence in order to become a reference in bank-insurance in each core country. We will consolidate our presence in these core countries by means of organic growth or attractive acquisitions, in line with clear and strict strategic and financial criteria.

We will strengthen our bank-insurance model

We intend to gradually strengthen our bank-insurance model in a cost-effective manner in all our core markets.The roll-out of this model will occur in several phases in the various core markets. Uniting the banking and insurance activities in a single group generates added value for both clients and KBC (see ‘Our bank-insurance model’).

We monitor our sustainability

We monitor our long-term performance and our focus on the real economy and sustainability via a number of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the most important of which are listed in the table below. Effective results per KPI can be found in the annual report.

We have built a stringent risk management framework

We have placed our sustainable and profitable performance within a framework of robust risk, capital and liquidity management. Our risk management is based on a ‘Three Lines of Defence' model, to shield us against risks that might threaten the achievement of our goals.

If you want to know more about our risk approach, click here