CEO Q&A: BNY Mellon’s Hassell on Corporate Social Responsibility

As a part of this year’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report, BNY Mellon Chairman and CEO Gerald L. Hassell shared his thoughts on financial services industry trends, the evolution of CSR and key BNY Mellon CSR accomplishments. We’ve excerpted part of his Q&A below. Read the full Q&A here.

How has CSR evolved over the last several years? How is the mindset on business alignment and the benefits of CSR changing?

The scope of CSR programs have traditionally been quite narrow, consisting largely of community support and environmental initiatives. That has significantly evolved in the past decade. We’ve seen a recognition from CEOs and boards that a company’s responsibility to and impact on society doesn’t end with its community support and environmental commitments.

Those commitments remain core components of CSR programs, but companies are increasingly aligning their CSR strategy with their purpose by honing in on issues of significant importance to the business. They’re applying more rigor and developing interdisciplinary CSR strategies that are mutually reinforcing and aligned with the company’s role, brand and values.

At BNY Mellon, we’ve aligned our CSR strategy with business objectives by considering our critical role in the markets and identifying the issues that are likely to most significantly impact our stakeholders. We periodically revisit our analysis because global trends not only impact our business, but also our CSR strategy. The rapid pace of change, particularly in technology, presents risks as well as opportunities, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t account for those in our CSR efforts.