Sustainability

1. Long-term business success

A responsible approach is essential if we are to continue to do business successfully in the future. Aareon therefore relies on:

• Stakeholder dialogue (at numerous events, particularly the Aareon Congress)
• Memberships (e.g. associations)
• Compliance, anti-corruption guidelines and risk management
• Expansion of digital solutions
• Intensification of the cooperation with start-ups, e.g. partnerships and product integration to seize on developments and trends early on
• Development of new markets and market segments
• Customer-oriented, agile and innovative organisation thanks to a comprehensive change management programme

Together with the Aareal Bank Group, Aareon pursues a sustainability-oriented strategy. Aareal Bank Group is rated in various sustainability rankings.

2. Customers and products

Aareon takes a long-term approach to customer relationships and aims to provide innovative and sustainable solutions, ensuring it is well prepared for the megatrends of the future:

• Broad range of mobile services to tap the potential of digitalisation for Aareon customers
• Digital activities as a central element of the corporate culture to optimally support the internal digital transformation of customers
• Intensive cooperation with customers at the Aareon DesignLab in line with the design thinking method
• Transfer of know-how across borders and teams to expand Aareon Smart World: The knowledge is made available to all customers more quickly, creating new prospects for increasing their economic success.
• Customer satisfaction (advisory boards, regular customer survey)
• Information security and data protection (data protection officer and DQS data protection certification, TÜV data protection certification in accordance with ISO/IEC 27001, PS 951 certification for the Aareon IT Service Centre, security in the Aareon Cloud)

3. Employees

Aareon’s success is largely down to its staff. Customers can rely on our extensive know-how and intensive support by specialists with many years of market experience. Aareon therefore attaches great importance to systematic employee development to enhance its employees’ professional and personal skills.

Our forward-looking corporate culture is the basic prerequisite for mutual, agile and creative cooperation in a digital working world in which the lines between professional and private lives are becoming increasingly blurred. Such a culture allows us to incorporate societal changes in our daily business and open up new opportunities. A few examples:

• Project work, different career paths and tailor-made personal development measures guarantee diverse prospects for personal and career development
• Compatibility of work and private life, e.g. flexible models for working hours and workplaces
• Further training and promotion of young talent
• Topical projects and presentations, Group diversity principles, officer responsible for legislation on equal treatment
• Safety in the workplace, health management, employment protection legislation
• Regular employee survey

4. Environment

Aareon integrates environmentally sustainable decisions in its business activities and has received multiple awards from Ökoprofit-Klub as a result:

• Use of geothermal energy at our head office in Mainz to heat the building in winter and cool it in the summer
• Use of energy-efficient, state-of-the art systems at the Aareon IT Service Centre
• Use of the IT Service Centre’s waste heat to assist the building’s heating system and replenish the store of geothermal energy in the summer
• Environmentally friendly, energy-conscious behaviour by all staff in their everyday work, particularly “green consulting”, e.g. teleconferences and video conferences as well as webinars to reduce travel expenses and emissions and to save time
• IT workplaces equipped in accordance with environmental guidelines: recyclable, low-pollutant systems that consume little electricity

Aareon’s product range, too, serves to promote environmentally friendly and sustainable activity in society at large.

The use of ERP systems and integrated services boosts process efficiency, in part due to the digitalisation of data and the interfaces to the service systems. This promotes transparency in the company and lays the groundwork for sustainable decision-making.

It also helps to achieve a substantial reduction in the amount of paper consumed and archiving space needed, for example thanks to electronic processing of invoices.

5. Society

At present, we primarily support organisations and initiatives in Germany working in the following three areas:

1. Competitions in the property sector
2. Promoting young talent
3. Social commitment

Sustainability within the Aareal Bank Group

Now more than ever, companies are expected to contribute to the sustainable development of the economy and society.

“Trust ranks amongst the most important foundations of our business activities. To this end, we emphasise absolute integrity, respect the ten principles of the UN Global Compact, and ensure that our activities are highly transparent, both internally and externally. This way, we are – and will remain – reliable and predictable to our stakeholders. Therefore, we have been a signatory of the ten principles of the UN Global Compact since 2012 out of conviction.”
Hermann J. Merkens, Chairman of the Management Board, Aareal Bank Group

[You can find further information as well as the latest Sustainability Reporting on the website of the Aareal Bank Group.]