In the first stage, two groups of customers were selected with a younger profile, in order to evaluate receptivity towards the proposal: • 22,851 BES Up customers (young people pertaining to universities with which BES has a financial protocol). Only 43 refused to adhere to the Digital Statement. Success rate: 99,82%. • 8,500 BES 18-31 customers (current account aimed at the segment of young people aged between 18-31 years). 34 refused to adhere to the Digital Statement. Success rate: 99,60%. The campaign’s results exceeded Banco Espírito Santo’s best expectations. The initiative will be implemented for the Bank’s other customers, thereby making it possible to save around 900,000 tonnes of paper a year. The environment is grateful.

Communicate to Banco Espírito Santo’s (BES) customers that they will cease to receive their monthly bank statement in a paper format and may instead consult the statement online via the BESnet internet banking service. Banco Espírito Santo uses over 75,000 tonnes of paper per month which it aims to gradually eliminate within the framework of its environmental responsibility policy (BES for the environment). However, the Portuguese legal framework enables any customer to refuse authorisation for this alteration and obliges the bank to inform its customers in writing, in other words... in a paper format.

BES feared that it might provoke a negative reaction from customers due to the fact that it was imposing an alteration to their habits and in addition was using paper in order to communicate an environmental measure. It was necessary to anticipate any negative reaction by raising customers’ awareness for the small but important “role” (In Portuguese the word “papel” means both paper and “role”) that they can play in helping to defend the environment. The concept chosen was “Thank you for your role/paper”.

In order to illustrate the concept, “Thank you for your role/paper” an envelope was sent identical to the envelope used for the paper statement every month, but this time it was empty. The paper had been removed from the envelope (i.e. the letter and bank statement) for which we gave our prior thanks.