This proxy season has brought two shareholder proposals requesting that two different Equator Principle Financial Institutions (EPFIs)—Citigroup and Wells Fargo—produce reports on how their financing projects impact Indigenous peoples’ rights.
The Equator Principles (EPs) created a framework for financial institutions to detect, assess, and manage social and environmental risks in existing and proposed financing projects. But shareholders are looking to broaden that scope to include general corporate financing that affects Indigenous peoples. And although their proposals did not pass, shareholders are gaining traction.
Equator Principles
The July 2020 update to the EPs requires that each EPFI “fulfill [its] responsibility to ...