Independent Assurance Report

This document is an English translation of the Finnish report

To the Management of OP Cooperative

We have been engaged by the Management of OP Cooperative to provide limited assurance on the OP Financial Group’s corporate social responsibility information from the reporting period 1.1.–31.12.2017. Corporate social responsibility information has been presented in the OP Financial Group’s annual report OP Year 2017, in the “Corporate Social Responsibility and GRI” section’s GRI Index (hereafter Corporate Social Responsibility Information).

The Management of OP Cooperative is responsible for the preparation and presentation of the Corporate Social Responsibility Information in accordance with the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards.

Our responsibility is to carry out an engagement to express an independent conclusion on the information subject to the assurance based on the work performed. We conducted our engagement in accordance with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements ISAE 3000 (Revised). We are independent from the corporation according to the ethical requirements in Finland and we have complied with other ethical requirements, which apply to the engagement conducted. We apply the International Standard on Quality Control 1 (ISQC 1) and accordingly maintain a comprehensive system of quality control including documented policies and procedures regarding compliance with ethical requirements, professional standards and applicable legal and regulatory requirements.We do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than OP Cooperative for our work, for this assurance report, or for the conclusions we have reached.

The evaluation criteria used for our assurance are the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards.

Limitations of the engagement

Data and information related to corporate responsibility are subject to inherent limitations applying to data accuracy and completeness, which are to be taken into account when reading our assurance report. The presented Corporate Social Responsibility Information is to be considered in connection with the explanatory information on data collection, consolidation and assessments provided by OP Financial Group. Our assurance report is not intended for use on its own in evaluating OP Financial Group’s performance in executing the corporate social responsibility principles OP Financial Group has defined. To assess the financial state and performance of OP Financial Group, OP’s audited Financial Statement for the year ended 31 December 2017 is to be consulted.

The work performed in the engagement and our conclusion

Our assurance procedures are designed to obtain limited assurance on whether the Corporate Social Responsibility Information is presented in accordance with the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards in all material respects. A limited assurance engagement consists of making inquiries, primarily of persons responsible for the preparation of the Corporate Social Responsibility Information, and applying analytical and other evidence gathering procedures, as appropriate.

In our engagement we have performed the following procedures:

• Interviews with members of the Management of OP Cooperative to reassert our understanding of the connection between OP Financial Group’s corporate social responsibility procedures and OP Financial Group’s business strategy and operations as well as corporate social responsibility objectives;
• An assessment of the Corporate Social Responsibility Information’s conformity with the principles of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards for defining content and reporting quality;
• An assessment of coverage of the material aspects selected for the Corporate Social Responsibility Information and the definition of reporting boundaries in the context of OP Financial Group’s business operations and sector;
• An assessment of data management processes, information systems and working methods used to gather and consolidate the presented Corporate Social Responsibility Information, and a review of OP Financial Group’s related internal documents;
• Comparison of the presented Corporate Social Responsibility Information to underlying rules of procedure, management and reporting systems as well as documentation;
• A review of the performance data and assertions presented in the Corporate Social Responsibility Information, and an assessment of information quality and reporting boundary definitions;
• Testing of data accuracy and completeness through samples from OP Financial Group’s information systems and original numerical information received from the Group’s member institutions;

Based on the assurance procedures performed, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the information subject to the limited assurance engagement is not, in all material respects, prepared in accordance with the reporting criteria GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards.

Helsinki, 23 February 2018
KPMG OY AB