Sustainable Finance

Contributing to Sustainable Economic Growth

We use our core business of banking to promote sustainable development in our markets. As set out in our Sustainability Aspirations, we work with clients to deliver sustainable economic growth through the finance we provide. In 2018, we mobilised $20.8 billion for infrastructure development, including $2.9 billion towards clean technology, and helped our clients issue $9.1 billion in green bonds. We exceeded our Power Africa commitment by supporting more than $5 billion of power generation projects between 2013 and 2018. We closely manage lending to high-impact sectors and continue to progress our approach to climate change. In 2018, we reviewed 827 transactions against our Position Statements and trained more than 1,300 front-line colleagues on our revised environmental and social risk framework. We set out our intention to develop a Bank-wide climate risk management framework and published our first report aligned to the recommendations of the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). In 2019, we will develop a Bank-wide sustainable finance strategy, extend environmental and social risk reviews to Private Bank transactions and take forward the targets in our updated Climate change Aspiration. Find out how we are contributing to sustainable economic growth globally.