Sustainable Lending—How to Reduce Ecological Risk and Enhance Ecological Sustainability in the Corporate Business
Michael Keller, Relationship Management Multinationals, Corporate Clients, UBS
Current Situation
Banks cannot stop climate change on their own. But they have a key role to play in steering financial flows in the right direction. After an initial phase in which banks focused on Retail and Private Banking and the provision of sustainable financial products to the relevant customer groups, the granting of sustainable loans in Corporate Banking is now becoming increasingly important. The financial industry is thus not only supporting its corporate clients on the path to achieving their own sustainability goals. It also minimizes lender’s own credit risk through the targeted granting of loans. However, this is accompanied by a significant increase in the complexity of the lending business, which requires a deeper understanding of how to assess sustainability risks.
Objective
Building on industry practice and recent academic insights, this Master Class will provide a high-level overview of the fundamental climate issues at stake when banks lend to businesses. The Master Class will discuss currently available data and implementation approaches and discuss both opportunities and shortcomings of current practice. Overall, the master class aims to equip banking professionals with up to date and relevant high-level knowledge about sustainable lending.
Specific objectives are:
- Current research findings on green lending, its costs and benefits, the organizational challenges involved and the relevant regulation.
- How to measure and assess direct physical risks (e.g., rising temperatures, flooding, water scarcity) and indirect transition risks (e.g., stranding of fossil fuel reserves, other regulatory costs).
- Becoming familiar with the relevant implementation strategies involved, with respect to bank-level, local, national and international practice, including the motivation behind the different approaches and the trade-offs involved.
- Exploring current market trends in the field of sustainable finance and respective lending instruments and the way they are applied in practice.
The format will be a combination of inputs, discussions, and group problem solving.
Target Audience
This Master Class is aimed at credit specialists in the financial industry who wish to broaden their knowledge capital and deepen their understanding of green lending. For instance, relationship managers working in retail and corporate banking will find the Master Class useful in order to get familiar with the main challenges in green lending.
SAQ Recertification
This Master Class is an acknowledged SAQ recertification measure for the CWMA, CCoB and SME-Advisor profile and comprises four learning hours.