why does the bank want to know how many employees I have

Employee count determines your customer's CSRD regime

The bank usually does not ask this to qualify your business, but to determine itself under which reporting regime your customer falls and what chain data is required for that. The number of employees is, together with turnover and total balance sheet, one of the threshold values from Directive (EU) 2022/2464 (CSRD) that determine whether an undertaking is itself subject to reporting obligations, and at what level of detail. For the bank as a financial institution, your employee count counts towards the chain information it needs to compile its own sustainability reporting, even if you are not yourself subject to CSRD obligations.

Additionally, banks often use the number of employees as a scaling indicator in the EFRAG VSME basic module, the voluntary standard specifically designed for non-listed SME undertakings. If you complete that list for the first time, the answer is usually simply your current FTE number; an explanation of part-time or seasonal work is rarely requested, but some portals have a separate field for that. Note the difference with the number of countries where you have establishments: banks often ask those two in the same list, because together with employee count and turnover, geographic distribution also counts in determining the risk profile.

Where that comes from: threshold values and register data

The link between employee count and reporting obligation follows from the size criteria of Directive (EU) 2022/2464 (CSRD); the VSME basic module of EFRAG develops the same indicator for SME undertakings that are not themselves subject to that directive. The registered number of employees as recorded in the business register is established under the Trade Register Act 2007 — if in doubt about what counts as "current", that is the link that most banks expect, just as with the turnover requested as basic data.