Barclays invites clients and thought-leaders to address global social challenges

The discussion will help inform the evolution of Barclays’ Citizenship strategy, and highlight to the participants how the bank is changing its decision-making to better reflect the long-term needs of our stakeholders.

Antony Jenkins, Barclays Group Chief Executive and Skip McGee, Chief Executive, Barclays Americas stressed the importance of Barclays’ commitment to public and private collaboration in facilitating economic development and making an impact on 5 Million Young Futures, one of our strategic goals. Barbara Byrne, Vice Chairman, Investment Banking, also highlighted how Barclays’ Social Innovation Facility is combining resources, skills and knowledge to develop commercial products that deliver social impact.

A panel discussion included Antony Jenkins, Dr. Allan Pamba (Director of Public Engagement and Access Initiatives, GlaxoSmithKline), Fred Poust (Chief Marketing Officer, Clinton Global Initiative), and Linda Rottenberg (Co-Founder & CEO, Endeavor).

The event showcased a new corporate partnership with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) supported by the Social Innovation Facility. This partnership sees Barclays and GSK working together to increase access to affordable healthcare and medicines for people in Zambia, while helping to create improved economic conditions for growth. Barclays and GSK will pilot their partnership in Zambia with the ambitious goal to reach one million people by the end of 2016. The partnership aims to create a model that can be scaled across Africa.

Barclays’ event followed the Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), which took place earlier in the week in New York. At the CGI Annual Meeting, Antony Jenkins spoke about collaboration and our work to promote access to basic financial services.

Antony Jenkins said: “As a financial institution we have expertise, knowledge, networks, products and services that are critical for economic and social development. But we need to focus on what can be achieved if we combine those assets, with the expertise and resources of like-minded corporates across different sectors.”

Barclays held a stakeholder dialogue session in the UK in June to discuss progress and plans for our Citizenship agenda.Read the feedback from our UK event or find out more about our Citizenship commitments. Barclays will hold another stakeholder dialogue session in Johannesburg in October.

“As a financial institution we have expertise, knowledge, networks, products and services that are critical for economic and social development. But we need to focus on what can be achieved if we combine those assets, with the expertise and resources of like-minded corporates across different sectors”.

-Group Chief Executive, Antony Jenkins