In 2012, Kazakhstani entrepreneur Galimzhan Yessenov founded the “Courage to be First” corporate foundation. The foundation has now held more than 100 events attended by more than 200,000 people from all over the world. The flagship project of the foundation – the Almaty Marathon – has become an important driver of Almaty’s economic development, attracting tourists to the city and stimulating the growth of local businesses.
The marathon raised a record $143,000 for charity in 2023. Every year, a part of the registration fee charged to take part is allocated to children with special needs. Over 12 years, the foundation’s team has implemented more than 30 charitable initiatives worth over $610,000 and encouraged more than 3,000 children into sport.
Recently, Jusan Bank received another award for its latest Sustainability Report. KASE, the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange, commended Jusan Bank for the report, as part of an its annual reporting contest, an exercise assessing financial and non-financial reporting from a range of Kazakh companies. This comes after PwC Kazakhstan listed Jusan Bank’s report as the strongest of all sustainability reports by financial institutions in Kazakhstan in December last year.
ESG and sustainability has been a big focus for Jusan Bank in recent years and I’m pleased to share further recognition of our progress in this area.
You can read more in the press release here.
Sport and business have a long history together, whether that’s quite directly related to the business of sports, like broadcasting rights and sponsorships, to businessmen taking their career winnings and buying their favourite local soccer club, or to retired athletes like David Beckham monetising their careers and profiles.
There’s another way that I have found sport and business to be intertwined and that’s the lessons that participating in sports teaches, that have applications in a person’s career. I wrote more about this in Finance Digest - check out the full article for more.
25 February saw the 2024 Winter Run in Almaty, Kazakhstan take place. It’s organised by the Almaty Marathon, which I co-founded in 2012, and has become the traditional season opener for the Central Asian running season. The Winter Run caters for all abilities from kids and beginners to national champion level racers, with a kids race, a Nordic walk and a 10km run. You can read about 2024’s edition here.
In December 2023, PwC Kazakhstan commended Jusan Bank as the top-ranking financial services company in Kazakhstan for ESG disclosures in 2023, and the 13th overall company in Kazakhstan. We have focused on reducing our own emissions as well as reducing our portfolio exposure to high-emission enterprises.
There’s an increasing focus on ESG and sustainable business in Kazakhstan and I’m proud that Jusan Bank is helping drive the agenda in the financial services sector.
We’ll shortly be adopting a 2024 climate strategy, which I’ll share more details on in due course.
In the meantime, you can download and read Jusan Bank’s latest Sustainability Report here.