Latin America’s best bank for corporate responsibility 2026: Itaú Unibanco

At most large banks, corporate responsibility sits in a foundation, at arm’s length from the credit committee. Itaú Unibanco is different, it runs one of the region’s largest social investment programmes alongside inclusive finance and community infrastructure commitments funded from the balance sheet and audited like any other exposure.

The philanthropic side is the larger of the two in reach. The bank directed BRL867.6 million ($158 million) to private social investment in 2025, against BRL826 million across 1,700 projects the previous year, spanning education, sport, culture, urban mobility, diversity, longevity and response to extreme climate events.

Inclusive education work has reached a cumulative two million students and around 113,000 educators across all 27 Brazilian states; the DIVERSA platform, which shares practice in inclusive schooling, has drawn more than six million visitors from 160 countries since inception.

Scale is matched by targeting. The Potências programme, run with Fundação Itaú, committed BRL25 million to fund up to 385 undergraduate scholarships for self-declared Black, mixed-race and Indigenous students at three federal universities in the North and Northeast, tracking academic performance and dropout rates throughout.

An annual LGBTQ+ call for proposals with Instituto +Diversidade has distributed BRL2.5 million across 62 initiatives since 2017 to 2024, selecting 11 from 687 applications in the most recent round. Bike Itaú, the bank’s bike-sharing network, runs 15,000 bicycles across almost 1,500 stations in seven Brazilian cities and two elsewhere in Latin America.

Responsibility on the balance sheet

What separates Itaú Unibanco from regional peers is how much of this runs through lending rather than donations. Its 2025 Sustainable Funding Allocation Report, assured by PwC, shows BRL6.97 billion of sustainable funding fully allocated, with 36,299 transactions reaching 22,788 beneficiaries. Inclusive finance took the bulk: BRL2.5 billion to female-owned micro, small and medium-sized businesses and BRL2.36 billion to micro and small businesses, with further tranches for firms in the North and Northeast and in flood-hit Rio Grande do Sul.

The funding structure is itself notable. In March 2025, the bank issued a BRL1.4 billion sustainable bond with the IFC and IDB Invest – the first external biodiversity bond from a Brazilian financial institution – splitting proceeds between a BRL1 billion social tranche for MSMEs and women-led firms and a BRL400 million green tranche for pasture restoration under the Reverte programme.

What separates Itaú Unibanco from regional peers is how much runs through lending rather than donations

Through EcoInvest, the federal blended finance facility, Itaú supported investments in ecological transition, including sustainable infrastructure and sanitation initiatives that extended water and sewage treatment to a further one million people in São Paulo. The Brazilian Citrus Program for Climate Adaptation, launched with Citrosuco at São Paulo Climate Week in August 2025 is planting roughly 30,000 hectares of orange groves in the Cerrado, and is expected to yield 100,000 to 150,000 carbon credits a year over 25 years, with Itaú financing growers’ conversion to regenerative practice and trading the credits.

Inclusion also shows in service design. An expanded Brazilian sign language service centre handled more than 1,500 branch customers and more than 11,500 including digital channels; a voice-enabled credit card reads the purchase amount aloud to visually impaired customers before they enter a PIN; transgender and non-binary clients can update social and civil names across physical and digital channels.

Itaú Mulher Empreendedora, run with the IFC since 2013, has reached more than 850,000 women. Suppliers are the newest front: 150 SMEs completed human rights and inclusion training under the Itaú Value Chain programme with the UN Global Compact, against a target of engaging every supplier on ESG by 2030.

Governance holds it together. A board-level social, environmental and climate responsibility committee meets regularly over the year, and so does an ESG commission chaired by the chief executive. Few banks in the region can show as short a line between stated commitment and audited disbursement.