The heat is on: investor action needed

With a heatwave causing reduced harvests and dangerous forest fires in many places of the world, the past weeks have brought to our attention what climate change really means. Such visible effects led to Swiss Television coverage (SRF Börse) of the role of insurance companies regarding climate change, featuring an interview with Swiss Sustainable Finance. The interview highlighted how global insurers, including those in Switzerland, are increasingly implementing strategies both on the investment and insurance side, to drastically reduce their exposure to coal, and hence to activities linked to climate change.

Over the summer, to support the further promotion of sustainable investments, SSF launched new tools and services: An online e-learning tool and a digital library on sustainable finance. Furthermore, in the events we’ve prepared for autumn, we will cover various topics ranging from blended finance to human rights due diligence, topics that are, next to climate change, equally important to create the sustainable world we wish to live in.

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

SSF launches new education tools

At the launch event in Geneva, Kate Cacciatore and Jean Laville,  Deputy CEO SSF, explained how EdR’s need for internal training on sustainable finance lead to a fruitful cooperation and resulted in these practical tools. In the subsequent discussion, participants debated the best ways to disseminate the tools among members and network partners. 

SSF members can access the online e-learning and the slide-deck in the members’ section of the SSF website. For non-members, further information on the e-learning is available in the SSF flyer.

New SSF Service: Digital Library on Sustainable Finance

The Digital Library currently contains more than 300 reports in up to four languages (EN,DE,FR,IT) and is updated on a regular basis. Users benefit from short summaries of each publication provided by SSF. 

Further information and tips for using the Digital Library can be found in our flyer.

Read more about these and other SSF activities

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Swiss news

• Swiss Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard presented the first Swiss SDG report at the UN High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development on 17 July 2018 in New York. The corresponding baseline assessment on the progress of the 2030 Agenda underlines the importance of private resources and dedicates a chapter to making financial flows more sustainable, which also features SSF.
• The federal popular initiative aimed at “Prohibiting the financing of war material producers by the Swiss National Bank, foundations and public and occupational pension funds” has been formally validated by the Federal Chancellery and will be put to vote.
• After a pilot phase conducted by FOEN, the climate alignment test tool is now available under www.transitionmonitor.ch. This tool allows investors to measure current and future portfolio exposures to high/low-carbon technologies and determine alignment with various climate scenarios.
• The Swiss Pension Fund Association ASIP revised its “Guidelines for Pension Fund Investments”. The guidelines contain a new section explaining different ways to integrate ESG factors, with a reference to the SSF Handbook on Sustainable Investments. They further state that ESG factors are to be considered when analysing financial risks.

International initiatives

• The European parliament has voted in favour of creating a label for social enterprises. The proposal was backed by a majority of 77%.
• On July 22, G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Buenos Aires welcomed the 2018 G20 Sustainable Finance Study Group Report. The report presents 3 core ideas; securitization of sustainable assets, developing sustainable PE/VC and the application of fintech.
• After the PRI launched findings on how seriously corporates are considering issues of cyber security, 53 institutional investors are collectively engaging with global companies on the issue in order to improve company disclosure on cyber security governance and processes.
• IFC and Goodwell investments, in collaboration with fintech investors and innovators, launched the Guidelines for Investing in Responsible Digital Financial Inclusion. The Guidelines are hosted on the Responsible Finance Forum platform.
• 1 August marked Earth Overshoot day, the day when humanity’s demand for ecological resources in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.

Market trends

• As of 2 July, Swiss Re has begun implementing a policy announced last year, stating it will no longer provide (re)insurance to businesses with more than 30% thermal coal exposure across all lines of business. This is in line with other insurers such as Axa, Zurich and Allianz, which have also backed away from coal.
• Following this trend Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, announced its plan to step away from companies that generate more than 30% of their business with coal and no longer insure new coal-fired power plants or mines.
• The Church of England continued its engagement on environmental issues, deciding to divest from companies that are not aligning themselves with the Paris Agreement.
• Ireland has committed itself to divesting public funds from fossil fuel companies, becoming the world’s first country to divest from fossil fuels.
• Italian insurance supervisor IVASS passed a regulation last month forcing insurance companies in the country to consider environmental and social issues in all their activities.
• In a similar move, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution calling for insurance companies to stop insuring and investing in fossil fuel, and requested to end any formal relationship with insurers who do not take appropriate steps.
• Eumedion published the first Dutch stewardship code, which covers responsible voting in the context of securities lending and short selling. The new code goes further than the Shareholder Rights Directive.
• Investment consultant Aon has developed an ESG rating system for buy-rated investment strategies. The system is designed to assess whether and how well investment managers integrate responsible investment and ESG consideration into their investment decision making.
• In Australia, a young investor has taken a 37$bn pension fund to court over ESG.

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• 6 August, SRF Börse, TV-interview with Sabine Döbeli
• 6 August, NZZ, Tücken beim Anlegen in nachhaltige Indizes
• 3 August, NZZ, Besser Peter Pan als Kapitän Hook
• 6 July, RSI Rete Uno, Interview with Alberto Stival, SSF Ticino Representative
• 3 July, NZZ, Umwelt und Menschenrechte - der Druck auf die Banken nimmt zu
• 2 July, NZZ, Die Swiss Re distanziert sich von Kohle
• 28 June 2018, Schweizer Bank, Beschleunigtes Wachstum für nachhaltige Anlagen
• 25 June, Absolut Research, Nachhaltige Investments am Finanzplatz Schweiz
• 21 June, Investment & Pensions Europe, Not considering ESG could mean failing fiduciary duty
• 20 June, cash.ch, Weshalb Banken das Nachhaltigkeits-Thema vorantreiben
• 19 June, Le Temps, L'investissement durable explose
• 13 June, Finanza Sostenibile, La finanza sostenibile: il nostro futuro
• 11 June, Citywire, Unigestion CEO : watch out for ‘risky’ non-ESG investments

Visit our website for more articles and regular updates

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We welcome the following organisation as new SSF member:

• 28 August 2018, SSF and Convergence Blended Finance Information Session and Networking Breakfast in Zurich (exclusively for SSF and Convergence members and network partners)
• 4 September 2018, Swiss Green Economy Symposium 2018, Winterthur. With an Innovation Forum on Sustainable Finance and Investments, partnered by SSF.
• 6 & 7 September, Launch of SSF education tools for financial professionals – “Sustainable investments in a changing world” in Lugano and Zurich (exclusively for SSF members and network partners)
• 6 September 2018, ZHAW, Artificial Intelligence in Industry and Finance (3rd European COST Conference on Mathematics for Industry in Switzerland), Winterthur
• 25 September, twentyfifty and SSF workshop on Understanding human rights due diligence requirements for the financial sector, Zurich
• 1-2 October, Fintech+ Conference, Zurich, partnered by SSF. SSF members benefit from a discount, please look at the member’s section of the SSF website for further details.
• 22-26 October 2018, UNCTAD, 2018 World Investment Forum, Geneva
• 22 November, IFZ Sustainable Investments Day, Zug
• 7 December, Geneva Summit on Sustainable Finance, Geneva. A Call for Papers is open until 17^th August.

Further events are listed on the SSF website

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• July 2018: The Swiss Pension Fund Association ASIP published a revised version of its “Guidelines for Pension Fund Investments” with a short section on sustainable investments. The guidelines can be downloaded on the ASIP-website (free for ASIP members).
• July 2018: A whitepaper by Fidelity International on the Impact of ESG investing in corporate bonds found that integrating ESG characteristics beyond pure financial data can add value by improving performance and reducing return volatility.
• July 2018: A new paper on Climate Change Risks to the Insurance Sector was published by the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) and the Sustainable Insurance Forum (SIF). The paper calls on insurance sector to intensify climate risk scrutiny.
• July 2018: A new whitepaper on Broad Diversity as a Driver of Meritocracy published by Invesco highlights the benefits of diversity for team performance and business in general.
• July 2018: The future prospects for fossil fuels are weighted low, according to an analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and the Sightline Institute, The Financial Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment.
• July 2018: The PRI published the outcomes from the PRI-coordinated engagement with 32 companies between 2015 and 2017 in the report Digging deeper: human rights and the extractives sector.
• July 2018: Part 2 of the outputs of a working group of 16 banks piloting the TCFD recommendations was published by the UNEP Finance Initiative & Acclimatise: Navigating a New Climate. Assessing credit risk and opportunity in a changing climate gives insights on physical risk and opportunities.
• June 2018: John Ruggie and Emily Middleton published a working paper on Money, Millennials and Human Rights: Sustaining ‘Sustainable Investing’. The paper assesses that the “S” in ESG is by far the weakest and that investors have little expertise in human rights.
• May 2018: South Pole published an analysis for the Swiss Government on Water risk and financial market.

Read these and other reports in our Digital Library on Sustainable Finance.

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