Digitalisation of the banking sector and corporate social responsibility: why is there such a long way from «books» to «facts»?

Abstract

The large banks have extensive commitments to so-called «corporate social responsibility». This is how they expose it in their annual reports on non-financial information and exhibit it on their websites and in their social marketing departments. Corporate social responsibility implies a governance model of the banking business that not only seeks competitive advantages (to distribute dividends to shareholders and increase the remuneration of its managers), but also to create value for its workers and clients, as well as for society as a whole. A recent book, directed by professor María del Carmen Boldó Roda, thus exposes it in a very illustrative way.

However, reality shows a policy of the large banks (CaixaBank, BBVA, etc.) essentially oriented, because of the radical digitalisation processes of their business models and forms of organization of their services, to improving the position profitability in the banking markets. These policies have very high social costs, due to their exclusionary effects. First, it favors the exclusion of the most vulnerable clientele, those that suffer from the digital divide (older people see face-to-face services reduced, due to the displacement to others online). After, the employed people, they see thousands and thousands of them lose their jobs. Finally, local communities, because the massive closure of bank branches exacerbates their risk of depopulation.

This analysis gives an expositional and critical account of the mismatch produced between the corporate social responsibility model that banks say they practice in their management of digitization processes and the verified reality, where the social is in the background. This tension has reopened a bitter debate about the most appropriate model of legal regulation of company restructuring instruments and their impact on people, in a scenario of counter-reform of the labor markets.