Financing Responsible Climate and Societal Action Through Innovation: Leaders for Transformation Case Study of Indian Bank

To achieve the 2030 sustainable development goals target, countries would require a mammoth amount of financing. Financial institutions have a crucial role to play in mitigating the funding gap. Proactive innovative steps by financial institutions can operationalize sustainable and inclusive development and help them to achieve sustainable development goals. In this paper, we draw attention to the largest Indian public sector bank and the innovative measures it has taken for responsible finance and sustainable banking towards climate and societal action. We manually evaluate the sustainability and annual reports for the past 5 years, present the findings, and develop a framework that can help the other banks emulate its steps, especially the ones who perceive it as a benchmark bank. Our study contributes to the stakeholder theory, especially from the perspective of leadership roles. On the policy level, we notice that responsible leadership can guide successfully and help in the transition to a more inclusive and low-carbon economy without affecting the financial capital of the bank. Keywords Responsible Finance; Eco-innovation; Social innovation; Digital Innovation, Sustainability Reporting, Sustainable Banking