Sustainable farm lending programmes
in Innovation and Insights, Sustainability Assurance
Author: AsureQuailty
176
AsureQuality is committed to supporting sustainable farming and agriculture initiatives, particularly through our sustainability assurance work. This includes working with our banking partners, providing assurance services for sustainable lending programmes, which are aligned to the Sustainable Agriculture Finance Initiative (SAFI) guidelines.
Our role is to provide independent auditing services for our banking partners, as well as technical sustainability and assurance expertise.
Sustainable loan programmes come with several benefits for farmers. Usually, compliance with a sustainable lending programme results in a reduced interest rate for the borrower. One of the other key advantages is the reduced duplication of audits, as the process makes use of existing information, saving time and money for all stakeholders.
How does it work?
Farmers voluntarily participate in these programmes, which are owned and promoted by the banks. When applying to these programmes, farmers choose to share relevant audit data to support their application for a sustainable farm loan, and give consent to share this audit information with AsureQuality and their relevant bank.
AsureQuality reviews self-assessments and existing audit data submitted by the applicant (farmer/grower or farm owner) and provides recommendations for approval to the bank based on this information.
In addition, our Sustainability Assurance team conduct ongoing verification audits for properties within the programmes. The information AsureQuality manages in the assessments is related to good on-farm practice – no financial information is reviewed by AsureQuality.
Safeguarding customer data
Our sustainability assurance work is built on a strong foundation of data privacy and an understanding of sustainable farming practices.
Across all aspects of our business, we safeguard our customers’ data through strict governance policies. This includes respecting the privacy and commercial sensitivity of the information accessed during audits. All files, records, and manuals related to certification and audits are held securely. Furthermore, during audits AsureQuality does not access any information without express permission from the site manager or owner.
For more information, please contact the Sustainability Assurance team.