PNC Publishes 2017 Corporate Social Responsibility Report

By Bill Demchak

As a Main Street bank organized around its customers and communities, we recognize that success isn’t about whether we sold another deposit product or booked another loan. It’s about whether we helped people and institutions achieve their financial goals. It’s about whether we are helping our communities to thrive. It’s about whether our employees are achieving their career aspirations and whether we are collectively living our values in a way that makes us all proud to work for PNC. It’s about whether we are doing right by the people we serve. And we know that when we do, financial success follows.

By virtually every measure, 2017 was a successful year for PNC. We had a record year in terms of our financials and returned $3.6 billion in capital to our shareholders. I invite you to read our annual report to shareholders for a detailed look at our financial performance and the progress we are making against our strategic priorities.

Our 2017 CSR report demonstrates the improvements we have made and reflects the efforts of every PNC employee, in every area of the bank, every day. While the report provides us with an opportunity to acknowledge how far we’ve come, it also serves as a channel through which we can openly and transparently communicate those areas where we can and should do better.

In 2017, we took a number of steps to strengthen the governance of our CSR efforts and to further integrate them into our business practices. In addition to our board of directors adopting formal oversight of the company’s CSR program, we announced ambitious new environmental goals, including our aim to reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption by 75 percent by 2035. We also revised our coal-fired power plant policy to prohibit the construction financing of single-site, coal-fired power plants and began work to design an environmental and human rights credit risk screening process that expands our environmental, social and governance screening across the bank’s entire corporate lending portfolio.

With the benefits of the new tax legislation enacted in December, we made a number of important investments in our employees, including a $1,500 credit to the pension accounts of employees who participate in the PNC pension plan (more than 46,000 with the potential to grow beyond 52,000 as more-recently hired employees remain with PNC long enough to become eligible for the pension plan). We issued a one-time cash payment of $1,000 each to approximately 90 percent of our employees. And we announced plans to raise our minimum hourly pay rate to $15 for eligible employees by the end of 2018.

Further, we made a $200 million contribution to the PNC Foundation, which oversees our work on early childhood education as well as our support for other important causes that help our communities thrive, including the arts, culture and our partnership with the United Way. Across our markets, the Foundation and PNC Bank provided $72 million in charitable giving and sponsorships in 2017, including $15.4 million in grants through PNC Grow Up Great®. We partnered with DonorsChoose.org to fund hundreds of pre-k classroom initiatives.

For the fifth year in a row, PNC was named one of the best places to work for LGBTQ equality by the Human Rights Campaign. We launched unconscious bias training to provide leaders with the tools they need to identify the filters and biases through which they view and interpret themselves and others so that they can make even better hiring and development decisions. We have been happy to see our investments in our people paying dividends in terms of substantially reduced turnover, along with news from CareerBliss ranking PNC ninth on its list of the happiest companies based on employee survey data.

We have much to be proud of, but we also have a great deal of work ahead of us in 2018 and as we look toward the future. Throughout our CSR report, you’ll see examples of both our achievements and our aspirations, and you will read about our commitment to working each day to become an even better company and corporate citizen.

Bill Demchak is PNC’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer 

View PNC’s 2017 Corporate Social Responsibility Report »