Danish Ship Finance, like any other business, need to take responsibility, mitigate risk and be mindful of the impact of our activities. Responsibility has always been a core value in our company and will continue to be in future. As corporate responsibility and sustainability converge and the definition of financial risks widens, we strive to ensure that our business activities and internal processes always reflects this.

Careful client selection

Our client portfolio is comprised of reputable, top-tier shipowners. Competition for these clients is intense, but we are confident that our value proposition is one of the most attractive in the industry. Most of our clients have been with us for many years, and when we take on new clients, we are diligent in our assessment process. We take a number of steps to ensure that we preserve our reputation and track record before we embark on new client relationships (figure). Together, these measures allow us to ensure that we only enter into business with the most prudent, reputable shipowners.

Operational initiatives

We have implemented sustainability ratings for all clients, and have made these ratings part of our credit assessment process for all clients, existing and new. In addition, Danish Ship Finance joined the Poseidon Principles in 2019, and comitted to annual reporting about the climate alignment of our portfolio. This has given us a benchmark for the performance of our portfolio, and going forward we can now use this benchmark to take action to bring our portfolio into alignment. We have also seen growing demand from clients for sustainability-linked financing, and in 2020 we granted the first few loans with terms linked to sustainability targets. We see this as a focus area going forward, and will continue to develop our approach to these types of structures in the future.