Cooperation is key when it comes to integrating sustainability into finance.

Three new international networks demonstrate the trend to join forces in addressing the broad and often complex tasks linked to this objective: Financial Centres for Sustainability (FC4S) held its inaugural meeting and announced the establishment of its secretariat in Geneva – notably with support from Swiss public authorities and private sources –, the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) gathered different central banks under a Dutch lead, and the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment unites universities with strong capacities in sustainable finance research – including the University of Zurich.

SSF used teamwork for several of its events, e.g. with CFA, the Swiss Fund and Asset Management Association (SFAMA) and the PRI. With very positive outcomes: the different events caught the attention of hundreds of financial experts and offered platforms for animated discussions.

When addressing the action plan of the European Commission, cooperation will also be key. We look forward to working with our network to find the right Swiss approach to foster sustainable financial services.

Kind regards,

Sabine Döbeli

CEO Swiss Sustainable Finance

SSF activities

Regulatory and market news

SSF and sustainable finance in the media

New members joining SSF

Join these events

New reports & studies

CFA Society Switzerland & SSF launch the Handbook on Sustainable Investments in English

Financial Centers for Sustainability (FC4S): secretariat in Geneva

Furthermore, FC4S announced that their secretariat will be established in Geneva offering valuable links to the international organisations based there. Read press release on inaugural meeting.

SSF partners with SFAMA for two Greenhouse Events in Zurich and Geneva

SSF co-hosts event for institutional asset owners with PRI

SSF hosts Asset Owner workshop on climate risks

On 21 March, SSF hosted a workshop on climate risks in portfolios with large Swiss asset owners. After input presentations by Prof. Battiston University of Zurich and Sabine Döbeli (CEO, SSF) the group discussion revolved around different climate risk assessment tools and concrete motivations for the practical implementation of such methods.

SSF participates in inaugural conference of Northern European Partnership for Sustainable Finance

On 6 March, SSF participated in the inaugural conference of Northern European Partnership for Sustainable Finance (NEPSF), hosted by the Smith School of Oxford University, the City of London and the UK Green Finance Initiative in London. This initiative was established to ensure that Northern Europe continues to be the centre of innovation in sustainable finance. Sabine Döbeli (CEO, SSF) presented SSF during a panel on the connection of national and subnational initiatives across Northern Europe.

Read more about these and other SSF activities

Back to top

Swiss news

• The Swiss National Council has seen a rise in parliamentary interpellations on the issue of climate finance. Politicians from left, center and right parties have demanded the Federal Council declare Swiss measures on financial flows to limit climate change, conception of fiduciary duty and support of responsible businesses. Successively, the Federal Council announced in a press release that sustainability should be included into the concept of fiduciary duty and that the industry initiate an exchange on the implementation of the TCFD recommendations from the FSB.
• SIX Swiss Exchange is now an official member of the Climate Bonds Initiative partner programme. The universe of listed green bonds in the Exchange includes a total of 13 green bonds with a nominal volume equivalent to around CHF 5.1 billion, indicated with a green bond flag.
• The University of Zurich is one of the founders of the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment, a network consisting of 18 top universities. The network aims to promote rigorous and highly impactful academic research and has launched a call for papers (deadline 30 April) for its Inaugural Conference at Maastricht University in September 2018.
• According to the Global Green Finance Index 1 (GGFI), Swiss sustainable finance centers rank relatively high in a global comparison with Zurich in the top quintile for quality and market penetration, while Geneva is in the 2nd quintile. The GGFI analyses financial centers purely according to the perceptions of financial market actors.

International initiatives

• The European Commission presented its Action Plan: Financing Sustainable Growth, outlining the legal implementation of the HLEG’s recommendations published in January. Besides making the terminology around sustainable finance more explicit with a taxonomy, the EU plans to create eco-labels for financial products, to clarify institutional investors’ fiduciary duty with regards to climate factors and to align the non-financial disclosure directive with the TCFD recommendations.
• After a first meeting in January 2018, the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) consisting of eight central banks and supervisors held its first International Climate Risk Conference for Supervisors with 200 participants, representing 50 central banks from 30 countries in Amsterdam. The UK and the Netherlands consider mandating carbon stress tests for banks in the future.
• As UK pension fund trustees have largely remained indifferent to the demand of the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) to take climate change risks into account, the EAC asked the 25 biggest UK pension funds managing £ 555 bn in assets to report on how they manage climate risk. The responses of the pension funds will be published and the EAC will explicitly name those not responding.
• Hong Kong’s government has paved the way to issue the largest sovereign green bond to date, with a volume of USD 100 bn in 2018-2019. The Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency also launched a Green Finance Certification Scheme based on the International Capital Market Association’s Green Bond Principles to enhance the credibility of the bonds’ environmental additionality.

Market trends

• Eurosif & Transparent have jointly launched their reviewed European SRI Transparency Code 4.0, now including key elements of the TCFD and HLEG recommendations as well as Article 173 of the French TECV Act on investor responsibility.
• A recent ING study shows 37% of smaller firms want to issue green bonds in the next 2 years, and 36% of larger firms are planning green bond deals, while 45% want to undertake green loans. To have a green loan quality benchmark, the Loan Market Association & APLMA launched the Green Loan Principles with the support of the ICMA.
• Danone is the first multinational company to issue a  € 300 bn social bond, according to the Social Bond Principles by the International Capital Market’s Association (ICMA). Earlier this year, the company integrated ESG criteria into the establishment of loan rates for its € 2 bn syndicated loan, led by BNP Paribas.
• The Spanish Bank BBVA pledged USD 100 bn to finance green energy projects by 2025. It is also the first large bank making its exposure to carbon-related assets of its balance sheet publicly available.
• The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and SoftBank signed a Memorandum of Understanding to finance the largest solar energy project ever planned with an estimated investment USD 200 bn by 2030. With 200 gigawatts (GW), the project’s capacity would more than double the amount supplied by the global solar power industry in 2017, which was 157 GW.
• The Swiss Association for Quality and Management Systems (SQS) has partnered with Contrast Capital to create the first quality assurance standard on responsible investment (RI) processes. The new standard can be used by asset managers to demonstrate their RI competency to asset owners.

Back to top

• 10 April 2018, Bilan, Un nouvel espace de coworking dédié à la finance durable à Genève
• 5 April 2018, Tagesanzeiger, Schweiz soll Investitionen in fossile Energien verbieten
• 3 April 2018, SRF, Banken geben Gas bei klimaschädlichen Anlagen
• 28 March 2018, NZZ, UBS Asset Management wird durchgehend nachhaltig
• 22 March 2018, SIF Newsletter, Umweltaspekte in der Finanzmarktpolitik
• 18 March 2018, Le Temps, L’expertise durable de Genève n’est pas reconnue à l’étranger (comment by Jean Laville)
• 17 March 2018, NZZ, Bundesrat Ueli Maurer sorgt sich um Protektionismus
• 9 March 2018, NZZ, Wie Brüssel den Finanzsektor ergrünen lassen will
• 5 March 2018, Le Temps, La durabilité à l'aune des «green bonds» genevois
• 5 March 2018, allnews, Corrélation entre critères ESG et rendement
• 28 February 2018, OLZ Newsletter, Nachhaltigkeit wird zum neuen Anlagestandard (Article by Sabine Döbeli)
• 22 February 2018, finews.ch, #Metoo: Schweizer Investoren an der Seite von Emma Watson? (Comment by Sabine Döbeli)

Visit our website for more articles and regular updates

Back to top

We welcome the following organisation as new SSF member:

• 24 April 2018, Finance Club HEC Lausanne & Oikos, Finance verte - Marketing ou innovation ?, Lausanne 
• 26-27 April 2018, Responsible Finance & Investment Foundation (RFI) & Swiss Arab Network (SAN), RFI Summit 2018, Zurich
• 8 May 2018, Finanz und Wirtschaft, Finanz und Wirtschaft Forum - Nachhaltig Investieren 2018, Zurich
• 30 May 2018, FNG, Infrastruktur Investments & Energiestrategie 2050, Zurich

Save these dates (more information to follow on our website soon):

• 1 June 2018, SSF, Launching of 2018 Swiss Sustainable Investment Market Study, Zurich
• 19 June 2018, SSF, Annual SSF Conference: Game-changers in finance – leveraging Swiss expertise, Bern

Further events are listed on the SSF Website

Back to top

• April 2018: The final report Making Waves: Aligning the Financial System with Sustainable Development of the UN Environment Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System cautions that current financial flows are still nowhere near enough to deliver the trillions of dollars needed each year to finance the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement.
• April 2018: The PRI has published an Asset owner guide: Enhancing manager selection with ESG insight to assist asset owners with ESG-related issues in the investment manager selection, appointment and monitoring process. It covers portfolio construction, engagement and voting, and reporting, in addition to looking at ESG scoring tools.
• April 2018: The Asset owner strategy guide: How to craft an investment strategy by the PRI highlights why asset owners should craft a clear and explicit investment strategy. It also includes recommendations for successfully implementing a strategy, focusing, on how to gain the board’s and senior management’s support before communicating the strategy across the organisation.
• March 2018: The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has collected the learnings from Fiji’s first sovereign green bond issuance in a Guidance for Sovereign Green Bond Issues document for other sovereign issues in emerging markets.
• March 2018: The Roadmap for the Future of Impact Investing: Reshaping Financial Markets by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) presents a vision for more inclusive and sustainable financial markets and articulates a plan with six categories of action for impact investing to lead progress toward this future.
• March 2018: On International Women’s Day 2018, the Business and Sustainable Development Commission published the Better Leadership Better world - Women Leading for Global Goals report, outlining how financial inclusion is crucial for creating new market opportunities and supporting SDGs that touch on poverty, clean water, sanitation, education, health, and well-being.
• February 2018: The PRI launched a practical guide to active ownership in listed equity with an overview of the steps investors should consider to develop their active ownership policies and practices. It offers PRI signatories practical tools, global best practices and references to be co-owners of investee companies.
• February 2018: Boston Common Asset Managers published the Banking on a Low-Carbon Future report backed by USD 2 trn in investor assets, examining climate management by 59 of the world’s largest banks. It finds urgent shortcomings that threaten to undermine efforts to support the transition to a low-carbon economy.
• February 2018: Based on interviews with 62 C-level executives from 21 companies, the Climate Change and the Insurance Industry: Taking Action as Risk Managers and Investors report by the Geneva Association offers new insights into the insurance industry’s role as risk experts, underwriters and investors in addressing the climate change goals and targets. 

Read these and other reports

Back to top

Follow us on Social Media

>Twitter @SwissSustFin

>LinkedIn Swiss Sustainable Finance