**3. Conclusion**

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility stems from the need for companies to interconnect the needs of the community with the various sources of profit. The growing interest in CSR issues, especially in banks, is the result of a cultural journey that sees the company reacting to market changes and being the protagonist of an increasingly sustainable future.

Banks integrate social and environmental interest into their strategic objectives. Together with the financial and environmental aspects, the ethical value of the banks assumes greater importance for the development of both production and marketing strategies, representing a new tool for competitiveness.

Banks pay attention to corporate social responsibility as an additional lever of innovation and development to better compete on the market in the medium and long term. More precisely, CSR contributes to the improvement of proactive risk management, integrating it with social, environmental and government variables; improves the relationship with stakeholders, promoting an analysis of the needs of bank interlocutors and the development of products, services and commercial models. Finally, the CSR makes explicit the implications that the role of intermediation of money has on society and favors the creation of a shared value. In light of the above, this chapter has set itself the objective of exploring the level of integration of Corporate Social Responsibility in the banking system. To achieve this, we carried out an exploratory analysis on a sample of 25 banks, belonging to the universe of Global Systematically Important Institutions in 2018. All the bank's official documents on governance and sustainability policies were analysed, and we used the Datastream database for some qualitative aspects. Our study focused on four areas of investigation relating to the composition, size and configuration of the boards of directors.

The main results show a favorable attitude of banks towards the integration of sustainable policies. More precisely, with regard to the first area ofinvestigation, a greater number of members of the board of directors (average of 13 directors) are associated with an improvement in CSR practices.

The examination of the number of independent directors (second area of investigation), as a tool to reduce the risk of manipulation or distortion of CSR relationships, showed positive trends. In fact, the boards of directors of the banks examined present an average of 64% of the independent directors.

A further crucial element for examining the implementation of CSR policies in banks concerns gender diversity on boards of directors. It is believed that more women on the board of directors positively influence the functioning of the board of directors and the disclosure on CSRs in banks. In 2018 the representation of women on the boards of banks of the banks analyzed was 35%.

Finally, the last area of investigation relating to the presence of a committee dedicated to CSR reveals a strong heterogeneity in the behavior of banks. On the one hand, some banks decide to set up coordination committees that control other units dedicated to specific CSR issues. On the other hand, in other cases there is

#### *A State of the Art of Corporate Social Responsibility in Financial Institutions DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94477*

cooperation between group level officials or committees focused on specific issues relating to the environment, society and governance. In the cases examined, there is often a special committee for responsible investment in the commercial asset management sector to ensure compliance with the responsible investment policy of banks.

To sum up, the integration of CSR policies will allow banks to compete better on the market in the medium and long term, satisfy the requests of their stakeholders as well as protect the ethical and social values of the banks themselves.

This chapter represents an exploratory study on the level of integration of CSR practices in banks and in particular on the boards of directors of banks. The elements considered in this study may be further investigated, through future empirical analyzes. Future research could be oriented towards an in-depth examination of the sustainable investments put in place by banks over time.
