In a year in which we witnessed multiple climate-related disasters and watched with horror the escalating violence in several countries, Triodos Bank’s pursuit to create positive impact remained as relevant as ever. We continued to be a frontrunner in sustainable banking by realising our mission to make money work for positive change in society. Organisationally, the bank made good progress on its three transitions: capital transition, operating model transition and leadership transition. And financially, the bank achieved its best result ever.
At the inaugural Triodos Bank Festival, we celebrated the multitude of ways to create positive impact and the unwavering commitment of the Triodos Bank community. It was an unforgettable event, and I was inspired to see over 8,000 customers, like-minded entrepreneurs, investors, co-workers and their families gather at our head office at De Reehorst. The festival highlighted the important role Triodos Bank continues to play more than 40 years since its inception.
Triodos Bank’s dedication to positive change was reiterated in 2023 with our support for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. As the first bank globally to do so, we built a broad international coalition of like-minded organisations and individuals calling on European governments to commit to a treaty to phase out fossil fuels. We also made an activist statement with the launch of our ‘Save fossil free’ campaign for retail banking customers in the Netherlands.
I am proud to see our frontrunner role acknowledged with multiple awards this year. These included being named most active clean energy lead arranger globally, ranking third in the global 2023 Sustainable Banking League Table and receiving the Charities' Bank of the Year award in the UK.
In 2023, we recorded strong financial results, supported by the changing interest rate environment. We raised interest rates on all our savings accounts and enhanced our term deposit offering, actively balancing our funds entrusted with our funding needs. This enables us to remain an attractive financial partner for our core customers: retail customers and small and medium-sized social entrepreneurs. Financing these change makers is essential for realising positive impact within our five transition themes: Energy, Food, Resource, Societal and Wellbeing Transitions.
In 2023 we made good progress on our five transition themes and achieved our best financial results ever.
To strengthen the unique position of Triodos Bank, we continued to execute three significant transitions.
As part of our capital transition, tradability in Depository Receipts (DRs) was restored through their listing on a multilateral trading facility (MTF). This historic moment marked the end of a prolonged period of suspension, a situation that has caused serious impact on many DR Holders. At the 2023 AGM, on behalf of Triodos Bank, I expressed our regret that we had not been able to prevent this situation and offered our sincere and heartfelt apologies.
With the listing of our DRs on the MTF with Captin, DR Holders can now trade on a weekly basis against variable market prices. In addition, with this listing DR Holders gained the right to request voting rights on their DRs at General Meetings. DR Holders can exercise their voting rights for the first time at the upcoming Annual General Meeting on 17 May 2024.
Whilst we restored tradability successfully, we do acknowledge that many DR Holders are not yet satisfied with the liquidity and price development of the DRs on the MTF. We will continue to support adequate trading liquidity and fair price development as far as possible within the boundaries of applicable rules and regulations. We launched an evaluation of the MTF performance to better understand which aspects require improvement and how this can be achieved. In addition, our relentless focus remains on making positive impact and delivering a solid financial performance, enabling fair dividends and ongoing investments in our bank's sustainable future. We will also continue to intensify engagement with our investor community. We trust these combined steps will support us to enhance the attractiveness of investing in our DRs.
We made significant progress in aligning, harmonising and integrating the bank's activities by redesigning our operating model, a transition that will be fully implemented in 2024. As part of our leadership transition, Kees van Kalveen was appointed as Chief Financial Officer in January 2023, completing the Executive Board. In October 2023, we announced that our Chief Risk Officer (CRO) Carla van der Weerdt will not return due to health issues. We are grateful for her contribution to the bank and wish her a good recovery and all the best for the next phase of her professional life. I am very pleased that Marjolein Landheer is willing to extend her assignment as CRO and will be nominated by the Supervisory Board at the upcoming AGM.
In addition to these three transitions, we made good progress in enhancing our banking operations. Specifically, I would like to highlight the improvements to our Know Your Customer and Customer Due Diligence activities in the Netherlands. The improvements we accomplished allowed the Dutch Central Bank to close the instruction they had given Triodos Bank in 2019 on these topics. I am proud of all co-workers who achieved this remediation, especially given the challenging circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As we move forward in 2024, our focus will be on enhancing our impact and financial results within the boundaries of our modest risk appetite, simplifying our banking operations and increasing the tradability of our DRs to the best extent possible. Ongoing dialogue with all our stakeholders remains an essential priority for us.
Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all our customers, co-workers and investors for their ongoing commitment to Triodos Bank and our mission of creating positive change for society.
On behalf of the Executive Board,
Jeroen Rijpkema