Digital library on sustainable finance
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This paper focuses on the actual and potential role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in achieving the transition to a low-carbon, just and sustainable world and, more specifically, FDI flows into developing countries. The particular implications of FDI on the environment – both potentially positive and negative – have given rise to an interest in the concept of “green FDI”. This publication attempts to aid the effort by taking stock of the current position and highlighting potential ways forward.
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Green Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries - EN
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The global community has spoken loud and clear: more resources must be mobilised to end extreme poverty and mitigate the effects of climate change. Blended finance - an approach to mix different forms of capital in support of development - is emerging as an important solution to help meet the ‘billions to trillions’ agenda. For development co-operation providers, the scaling up of this approach needs to be based on a good understanding of its potential in supporting developing countries meet the SDGs and Paris Agreement. This Policy Perspectives draws on recent OECD work, including the upcoming 2018 report Making Blended Finance Work for the SDGs, the draft OECD DAC Principles on Blended Finance and work under the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) on measuring the amounts mobilised by official development finance interventions.
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The aim of the study is to identify the extent to which sustainable capital markets impact the way companies handle the social and environmental challenges of sustainability. A total of 3,660 companies worldwide from the oekom Rating Universe, were contacted and invited to take part in the online survey. 475 companies participated in the survey. Analysis of the survey responses served as the basis of the study.
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The Impact of Socially Responsible Investments on Companies – an Empirical Analysis - EN
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The PRI published the SDG Investment Case in partnership with PwC. The report makes the case for why the investment community should adopt an active role in achieving real world impact through implementation of the SDGs. It outlines why there is an expectation that investors will contribute to the SDGs and – crucially – why investors should want to contribute to them.
- The SDGs represent the globally agreed world’s most pressing environmental, social and economic issues.
- Large institutional investors can protect their long-term financial performance.
- Achieving the SDGs will be a fundamental driver of economic growth.
- A significant proportion of currently external costs might at some point in the future be forced into companies’ accounts.
- Providing solutions to sustainability challenges offers attractive investment opportunities.
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There are many factors that influence the investment decision-making process for individuals, ranging from household wealth, to education, to experience, to age, and even to geographic location. One factor that has been consistently under-appreciated is gender. In this report, potential sources of this gender divergence on investment decisions, and the subsequent wealth disparities, are discussed. This paper illustrates how certain factors could prevent women from achieving their financial goals over their lifetimes. It also shows how all investors – including women - can build their wealth by investing in a disciplined way and taking the appropriate amount of risk.
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woman-and-investing-report-en-global (pdf 2.0 MB)Summary
This extensive study discusses the role of sustainable finance, its growth, its capacity to increase savings over time and its ability to respond to a series of values by funding the green economy, organic agricutlure, cultural initatives, etc.
It also includes a comparative analysis of 21 key players in European ethical finance and 15 mainstraim players from the traditional banking system. The report discuss other topics such as green bonds and microcredits in Italy and in Europe in general.
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La_finanza_etica_e_sostenibile_in_Europa_IT (pdf 9.2 MB)Summary
This report finds that companies outperforming in industry-relevant ESG areas boast higher valuation multiples and margins, all other factors being equal, than those with weaker performance in those areas.
The report examines companies in five industries: consumer packaged goods, biopharmaceuticals, oil and gas, retail and business banking, and technology. It assesses not only quantitative links between ESG performance and financials, but also identifies eight key success factors that can help companies improve both their societal impact and financial performance.
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Flows of large volumes of private sector finance are imperative for enabling the success of any attempt to mainstream green finance within existing institutional approaches. This outlines a path to leveraged and blended financing. Targeted linking of financing with performance and policy conditionalities to proactively lead to green results would leapfrog toward addressing the core problem of degrading ecosystems, constrained bankability, and discontinuous investment pipelines—adversely affecting the quality of growth. The Green Finance Catalyzing Facility (GFCF) described in this report was conceptualized as a result of this objective.
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CATALYZING GREEN FINANCE A Concept for Leveraging Blended Finance for Green Development - EN
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This report explores the lessons learned in the development of impact bonds in low- and middle-income countries, bringing together the findings from interviews with stakeholders and research into the impact bond space conducted by the authors over the course of a year. Furthermore the report includes a Deal Book with detailed fact sheets for all impact bonds in developing countries, featuring both the four contracted and 24 in design phases.
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Impact Bonds in Developing Countries: Early Learnings from the Field - EN
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This report reviews how bonds are being used to finance a transition to a low carbon global economy. It includes an analysis of the growing global ‘green bond’ market but also goes beyond the green label. It sizes and analyses the ‘climate-aligned bond’ universe comprised both of labelled green bonds (use of proceeds defined and labelled as green) as well as a much larger set of bonds issued by entities enabling a low carbon economy but are not labelled green.
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Bonds and climate change - The state of the market 2017 - EN
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This document is a practical guidance for investors on the integration of ESG criteria. It describes the scope, issues of ESG materiality, and provides case studies to make the concept more tangible. While for equity analysis ESG criteria are included alongside factors such as value, size, momentum, growth, and volatility, in credit analysis they help to establish the creditworthiness of an issuer.
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The 2017 Symbiotics MIV Survey, produced on an annual basis, aims to provide comprehensive market trends and peer group analysis on microfinance off-shore investments. Its primary function is to allow microfinance investors and fund managers to benchmark themselves and improve their knowledge of the industry. It also allows academia researchers and companies to have access to unique historical information about microfinance funds.
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2017 SYMBIOTICS MIV SURVEY Market Data & Peer Group Analysis - EN
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This guidance document is addressed in particular to smaller and medium size (SME) institutional investors to gain an initial overview. For this purpose, motifs and market developments are illustrated and investment strategies and -classes are analysed. The introductory document can not and should not answer all questions related to sustainable investment, but, if possible, refer to existing publications and guides, where selected topics can be studied in depth.
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Nachhaltige Kapitalanlagen für institutionelle Investoren - DE
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In cooperation with the independent rating agency Inrate, WWF Switzerland has audited the largest Swiss retail banks in the areas of savings, investment, provisions as well as loans and financing. The company management is also considered. The rating provides for the first time an overview of the overall sustainability level of the 15 largest Swiss retail banks.
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Sustainability in the Swiss retail banking sector - DE
Sustainability in the Swiss retail banking sector - FR
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This report is the first publication of a project aiming to establish a platform that profiles the sustainable finance capabilities of private banks and opens up an active dialogue on how to improve private banks’ sustainable finance advisory practices and enhance their service offerings.
The report summarizes the outcomes of the first phase of this project, presents the resulting framework of what constitutes private banks’ sustainable finance capabilities and shows the result of the pilot application of the framework with four private banks.
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Sustainable Investing Capabilites of Private Banks. Introducing the Framework - EN
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Dies ist die 9. Ausgabe der z-Rating Studie zu Corporate Governance in Schweizer Publikumsgesellschaften. Die Studie hat die Corporate Governance von 168 börsenkotierten Schweizer Gesellschaften anhand von 58 Kriterien analysiert.
Ascom führt die diesjährige Gesamtrangliste vor Inficon und Sunrise an.
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This third annual report on financing the UNDS presents the major trends, opportunities and challenges around financing the UN. After providing an overview of the revenue, income sources and expenditure of the UNDS, 28 concise essays from senior colleagues outside and inside the UN system help to chart five possible pathways for the UN’s role in financing Agenda 2030. The report seeks to present the current financial state of play and to stimulate fresh thinking around priorities for financing reform.
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Financing the UN Development System Pathways to Reposition for Agenda 2030 - EN
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Various studies report that investing in “sin stocks”, that is firms producing alcohol, tobacco, gambling and weapons, has historically delivered significantly positive abnormal returns. This finding has inspired the hypothesis that sin stocks are being shunned to such an extent that they end up being systematically underpriced, enabling other investors, to earn a return premium. In this article, the authors further investigate this notion, finding that the performance of sin stocks can be fully explained by the two new quality factors in the recently introduced Fama-French 5-factor model: profitability and investment. Their finding is robust over time and across different markets. In short, there is no evidence that sin stocks provide a premium for reputation risk after controlling for their exposure to factors in today’s asset pricing models.
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In the latest position paper, WWF intends to compare the sustainable finance activities in Switzerland to the ones by its international peers. It finds that there is little difference between market actors and civil society organizations in how they approach sustainable finance in Switzerland and abroad. The major exception is that Switzerland lacks effective framework conditions that encourage sustainable finance. In particular, there is a lack of incentives and support provided to the Swiss National Bank, pension funds, insurers, and Switzerland’s financial market regulator for embedding sustainability thinking into their core business. Therefore, the paper suggests seven policy recommendations to improve the framework conditions for sustainable finance in Switzerland.
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WWF White Paper: Sustainable Finance - Now or Never! - DE
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The OECD issued this paper which presents the findings of an international stocktaking of the regulatory frameworks that apply to institutional investment in different jurisdictions and how these frameworks are interpreted by institutional investors in terms of their ability or responsibility to integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in their governance processes.
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Investment governance and the integration of environmental, social and governance factors - EN
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This report is the first in a three-part series by the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) on its initiative to enhance the systematic and transparent consideration of ESG issues in the assessment of the creditworthiness of borrowers in fixed income (FI) markets. It provides a snapshot of the current state of play on ESG in credit risk analysis to better understand investors' and CRAs' actions, goals and expectations. Parts two and three will provide more in-depth coverage on existing challenges as well as future opportunities.
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Shifting perceptions: ESG, credit risk and ratings, Part 1: the state of play - EN
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This study, for the second year in a row jointly prepared by Forum Nachhaltige Geldanlagen and Swiss Sustainable Finance, provides an overview on the Swiss market of sustainable investments. In 2016 the market saw a sharp hike of 39% compared to 2015, bringing the total volume of sustainable investments in Switzerland to around CHF 266 billion as of 31 December 2016. As their importance for asset owners has steadily risen, assets from institutional investors now account for 82% of the Swiss sustainable investment market. Sustainable investment funds are gaining ground and currently account for 7% of the total fund market.
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Swiss Sustainable Investment Market Report 2017 - DE
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Position et plan d’action du Conseil fédéral concernant la responsabilité des entreprises à l’égard de la société et de l’environnement. Rapport du Conseil fédéral concernant l’état d’avancement de la mise en œuvre du plan d’action.
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The final report of the TCFD developed four widely adoptable recommendations on climaterelated financial disclosures that are applicable to organizations across sectors and jurisdictions . Those recommendations are grouped around the thematic areas governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. The Task Force recommends that preparers of climate-related financial disclosures provide such disclosures in their mainstream (i.e., public) annual financial filings.
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Recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (final report) - EN
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The aim of the publication was to spark the discussion and learning process on how the financial system in Switzerland can become more sustainable. One year after the publication of “Proposals for a Roadmap towards a Sustainable Financial System in Switzerland” by the Federal Office for the Environment (FEON), SSF set out to collect opinions on recent developments of the Swiss Financial System and the progress made in the five core areas of the “proposals". This includes asset and wealth management, institutional investors, credit business, capital markets, research and education. For this purpose, SSF invited its network to share their opinions on the developments regarding the implementation of the proposed measures through a short survey consisting of eight questions. A total of 34 individuals from the SSF network took part in the survey.
