KBN's impact reporting team prides itself on providing transparency and easy-to-use information.

The Norwegian government funding agency says it ensures maximum usability by providing aggregated impact data and project-level information on all 342 projects in its portfolio in a spreadsheet, to ease investors' own impact reporting.

The reporting covers NOK33 billion ($3.2 billion) of green loans distributed to 342 projects in seven project categories, presenting the environmental impact of a diverse asset portfolio.

KBN, which is known domestically as Kommunalbanken, says its transparency "goes beyond the common approach in the market".

It provides descriptions of eligibility criteria, screening processes and reporting principles to enable investors to "fully familiarise themselves with the governance of KBN's green bonds".

KBN says investors have praised the impact report for its "appealing layout and the thorough use of infographics and key figures" and inspired similar approaches by some of its peer issuers.

Meanwhile, it has added reporting of the contribution of its green lending to activities identified in the EU's sustainability taxonomy, and activity-by-activity description of alignment in spreadsheet format.

The issuer says all findings are presented "on an equal footing", including those which are not favourable for the issuer.

Miriam Bugge Anderssen, climate and green finance adviser at KBN, said: "KBN is proud and honored to receive the EF Bond Award for the second time. In an environment where expectations to sustainability reporting are rapidly changing and becoming more advanced, presenting this type of data in a meaningful way is increasingly challenging.

"KBN aims to continuously improve our impact reporting, and this award is a very welcome recognition of our efforts. As a relatively small institution we are also humbled to be in good company with previous years’ winners, while hoping to serve as an example that high quality reporting can be achieved by organisations of all sizes."

KBN was last victorious in the same Environmental Finance Bond Awards category in 2020.