Ant Group’s ESG strategy aims to support 100 million SMEs by 2030
1.6.2022 06:07:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Ant Group, a global technology provider, today announced its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy as part of its latest sustainability report. The ESG strategy, which lays out Ant Group’s sustainable development objectives by 2030, will be implemented across all aspects of the Company’s operations.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220531006112/en/
Four pillars of Ant Group’s ESG strategy and objectives by 2030 (Graphic: Business Wire)
Ant Group’s ESG strategy is focused around four pillars: Digital Inclusion, Green and Low-carbon Development, Open Ecosystem, and Technological Innovation. Each of the pillars has a corresponding sustainable development objective by 2030:
- Digital Inclusion: support 100 million small and micro-sized enterprises (SMEs) and serve communities globally
- Green and Low-carbon Development: achieve corporate carbon neutrality and support business partners and the general public to significantly reduce their carbon footprint
- Open Ecosystem: continue to provide a safe, trusted, diversified and open ecosystem to drive common development with partners
- Technological Innovation: continue to invest in core technology research and development to provide world-leading technological products and services
"We believe these are the most important pillars for Ant Group to achieve sustainable growth in a future-facing, responsible, and responsive manner,” wrote Eric Jing, Ant Group’s Chairman and CEO, in the sustainability report. ”This framework will guide Ant Group’s value creation and sustainable development in the future.”
Ant Group formulated its ESG strategy based on a comprehensive assessment of changing macro environment and policy trends, its own development strengths, and inputs from the Company’s stakeholders, including customers, users, employees, partners and governments. The ESG strategy was finalized after extensive management discussions and a detailed Board review.
After solicitating feedback from stakeholders, Ant Group defined 19 material issues for its ESG strategy, ranging from “responsible products and services,” “facilitating industry-wide carbon neutrality,” “cutting-edge technology discovery and R&D” and “transparency & risk management.”
To provide organizational support to effectively implement the ESG strategy, the Company’s Board of Directors has approved the establishment of an ESG sustainable development committee, comprised of a subset of the Board, responsible for decision-making supervision, risk management and policy making. The Company is setting up an advisory committee consisting of internal and external ESG experts to provide input and support. Ant Group has also set up an ESG sustainable development leadership team, led by the CEO and the Chief Sustainability Officer, as well as working groups for each of the 19 ESG material issues.
“Our ESG strategy originated from our own long-term needs and was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. The pursuit of sustainable development has been inherent in every step of our journey and is not designed to cater to short-term trends, but rather a necessary driver to realize our vision to be a good company that will last for at least 102 years,” added Mr. Jing. “A good company is never independently defined. We will listen to the opinions and suggestions from all parties with an open mind and welcome supervision and guidance from all of our stakeholders.”
As part of its “Technological Innovation” pillar, Ant Group has been increasing its R&D investments, which grew at an annual rate of more than 39% for three consecutive years (2018-2021), with total R&D spending in 2021 exceeding RMB 18.8 billion (approx. USD 2.77 billion). These investments enabled the Company to continuously turn technological breakthroughs into innovative, inclusive and reliable products and services to support the digital transformation of industries and better anticipate the evolving needs of an increasingly digital global economy. In 2021, MYbank, an Ant Group associate and an online SME bank, leveraged digital technology to deliver convenient, accessible and responsible collateral-free financing services to 45 million SMEs.
In February 2022, Ant Group was recognized as a Top 100 Global Innovator™ 2022 by Clarivate™. This prestigious annual list identifies global companies and institutions that contribute new ideas, solve problems and create new economic value.
Since 2017, three years after Ant Group’s establishment, the Company has steadily introduced and advanced its ESG assessment framework and published an annual sustainability report, compiled according to the Global Reporting Initiative standards. These reports, including the latest 2021 edition with the Company’s ESG strategy, can be found on Ant Group’s website (Chinese only for now, English edition will be online in the coming weeks).
About Ant Group
Ant Group aims to build the infrastructure and platforms to support the digital transformation of the service industry. Through continuous innovation, we strive to provide all consumers and small and micro businesses equal access to digital financial and other daily life services that are convenient, sustainable and inclusive.
For more information, please visit our website at www.antgroup.com or follow us on Twitter @AntGroup.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220531006112/en/
Contact information
Media Inquiries
Le SHEN
Shenle.sl@antgroup.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Faire Marks Five Years of Growth Outside North America: Over 100,000 Retailers, 50,000 Brands, and More Than One in Four Brands Now Selling Across Borders11.6.2026 12:05:00 EEST | Press release
Five years after launching outside North America, Faire’s community of more than 100,000 retailers and 50,000 brands across 30+ countries in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand shows a retail sector that is innovating and thriving, well beyond the big cities. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260611115823/en/ Faire Celebrates 5 Years of Growth in Europe "It has been a phenomenal five years for Faire internationally, and the opportunity ahead has never been clearer,” said Olivier Buffon, VP and Head of International at Faire. “Europe represents a retail market comparable in scale to North America, and the challenges Faire was built to solve exist wherever independent retail exists. A global platform is more valuable for everyone, and we’re so proud to support businesses becoming more confident and more global in how they buy and sell.” A Retailer Network Spanning Tens of Thousands of Towns Independent retail is al
Stallergenes Greer Will Present New Evidence on Long-term Outcomes in Allergen Immunotherapy at EAACI 202611.6.2026 11:09:00 EEST | Press release
Stallergenes Greer, a global leader in allergy care, will present new clinical evidence and scientific advances in allergen immunotherapy (AIT) at the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) congress, taking place from June 12 to 15 in Istanbul, Turkey. The company will host a scientific symposium entitled “From Nobel Prize discovery to AIT clinical evidence: Shaping pathways to respiratory allergy remission.”Three leading international experts will explore how landmark breakthroughs in immunology have deepened our understanding of immune tolerance, presenting emerging data on remission and long-term outcomes in respiratory allergy. Together, these insights reinforce AIT’s disease-modifying potential and its growing role in personalised medicine. “EAACI 2026 is an exceptional forum for the global allergy community to exchange knowledge and advance the field. Stallergenes Greer is proud contribute to these conversations, bringing together world-leading experts in pur
NIPPON KINZOKU’s “FINE PIPE” Series Welded Drawn Pipes Outperforming Seamless Pipes11.6.2026 11:01:00 EEST | Press release
NIPPON KINZOKU CO., LTD. (TOKYO:5491) (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo) has commercialized its “FINE PIPE” series *1, -welded drawn pipes that outperform traditional seamless pipes. By leveraging its unique expertise as a material manufacturer and proprietary processing technologies (welding, drawing, and annealing), the company delivers high-quality, eco-friendly, and cost-effective solutions. FINE PIPE is already widely adopted across various sectors, including automotive parts, measuring instruments, and industrial equipment, to meet the most demanding precision requirements. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260611874307/en/ In response to the growing demand for higher performance and faster processing in analytical and medical devices, NIPPON KINZOKU has developed two innovative products based on its FINE PIPE technology: "High-Precision Inner Surface" small-diameter tubes and "FINE PEEK-ST" stainless steel
Comrade Trustee Services goes live with Smartstream’s Air, the AI reconciliation and data automation solution11.6.2026 10:55:00 EEST | Press release
Smartstream, the trusted data solutions provider for leading global financial institutions and enterprises, today announces that Comrade Trustee Services Limited (CTSL), trustee for the Defence Force Retirement Benefit Fund in Papua New Guinea, has gone live with Smartstream’s Air, the AI reconciliation and data automation solution – cutting processing times from eight hours to under five minutes. The go-live delivers a fully automated, straight-through reconciliation workflow, enabling CTSL to significantly improve operational efficiency, accuracy and auditability. CTSL operates in a complex data environment, reconciling multiple file types, including fixed-length files and PDFs, requiring advanced matching logic. To manage this and scale, CTSL adopted Air for its ability to handle diverse data structures, custom integrations, and ETL-based transformations, delivering high automation and match rates. This has replaced manual data collection and Excel pre-processing, cutting processing
Wolters Kluwer enhances its Libra legal AI workspace in Italy by adding content specializations for One and integrating with Kleos11.6.2026 10:00:00 EEST | Press release
Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory announced today new content and feature integrations in its legal AI workspace Libra by Wolters Kluwer for the Italian market. Customers will have access to additional expert-generated content in compliance, criminal law and tax law, and profit from the integration with Kleos, the cloud-based practice management solution for law firms. Designed to support the daily work of legal professionals, Libra by Wolters Kluwer combines advanced AI functionalities with trusted sources and authoritative, author-generated legal content. Within a single environment, it enables research, analysis and drafting activities based on reliable sources, while maintaining full control over results and quality. By integrating additional expert content from One, Wolters Kluwer’s leading legal research platform, Libra offers even more focused and up-to-date content, enabling more precise analysis of specific topics, and foster direct integration between legal research and opera
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom