Financial Centres for Sustainability Annual General meeting Geneva, 9 October 2019
The Financial Centres for Sustainability network (FC4S) held its annual general meeting on 9 October 2019 in Geneva. The event was part of the Building Bridges week, organised with the support of Sustainable Finance Geneva, aiming at accelerating the finance industry’s contribution to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). FC4S was a core member of the planning committee for the Building Bridges week. On 10 October, the FC4S also launched a regional work plan for Africa that will work with the five African member centres (Abidjan, Cairo, Casablanca, Lagos and Nairobi) to encourage strategic action, collaborate with peers across the continent, and facilitate engagement with major international hubs. The FC4S was launched in September 2017, at a meeting co-hosted by the Casablanca Finance City Authority and the United Nations Environment Programme, in association with Italy’s Ministry of the Environment and Morocco’s presidency of the COP22 climate conference. In two years, its membership has grown from the original 12 members (Astana, Casablanca, Dublin, Hong Kong, Milan, London, Luxembourg, Milan, Paris, Qatar, Shanghai and Stockholm) to 30 (see map below), accounting for US$61.3 trillion in equity market capitalization and representing 80% of global equity markets.
FC4S membership as of October 2019 At the annual general meeting, which also saw the launch of the FC4S real economy lab in Shenzhen, the FC4S members agreed to mainstream green and sustainable finance both locally and internationally, also agreeing to set common targets by the end of 2022. The event comprised six sessions: Session 1 introduced the new members of FC4S (Beijing, Lagos, Lisbon, Madrid, Mexico City and Tokyo. The new members mentioned that FC4S membership enabled them to raise awareness about sustainable finance, look for complementarities with other centres in the country as well 1
as institutions such as central banks, and build the capacity of market actors on sustainable finance. Session 2 featured presentations from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (FISMA) and the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS). FISMA talked about the upcoming launch of the international platform for sustainable finance at the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings that would look to identify points of convergence on sustainable finance between the different participants, as a way to continue the work of the G20 Sustainable Finance Study Group. The NGFS is a club of central banks, with currently 46 members and observers that aim to address climate risk as a source of financial risk, and has issued recommendations for central banks/supervisors and policymakers. FC4S members highlighted that data and taxonomies are the most important issue, and proposed to keep each other informed when they are producing their taxonomies. Disclosures and incentives for investors to go green were also part of the discussion Session 3 focused on the results of the Assessment Programme, which is a survey sent to all the members. It asked questions on institutional foundations; enabling environments; market infrastructure; related stakeholders and information. Members discussed how to improve the next Assessment Programme, and especially how to measure the impact of the actions undertaken by each centre. Communication around the results, both internal and external, was also very important for the members as a way to showcase their actions and promote FC4S. Session 4 was devoted to targets and deliverables for 2022, which are going to be refined and amended with members’ input. The aim of the targets is not to be a burden on the members, but to have a sense of where the members and FC4S are going. Several members proposed to make collaboration between the members a goal, and others volunteered to propose KPIs for the targets. Session 5 reviewed the 2019 work programme and activities and updated the membership on the status of the different activities of FC4S during the past year. All the activities are either completed or ongoing. The discussion then focused on activities in 2020. In the ensuing discussion, members cited the membership development as the largest achievement of FC4S and the position of FC4S as a platform for international collaboration. They also highlighted areas for improvement that included the measure of progress and relationships with donors. Session 6 concluded the day with a discussion on action points and next steps. It was stressed that for a big impact in 2020, agreement to quickly to deliver all the outputs was needed. Proposed actions included awareness raising and ramping up communications, fostering bilateral connections between the members, focusing on Latin America and identifying top-down opportunities, creating partnerships around a topic or region, as well as impact on the real sector.
The meeting concluded with the announcement that the next annual general meeting would take place in Paris to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. It was also announced that Johannesburg would also very likely join the FC4S by the end of 2019.
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From left to right: Jeremy McDaniels, FC4S Head of Projects; Nick Robins, senior advisor; Pierre Ducret, cochair; Kong Wei, co-chair; Stephen Nolan, FC4S Managing Director
FC4S Annual meeting participants The annual meeting was followed by a reception at Palais Eynard hosted by the city of Geneva where Mayor Sandrine Salerno, addressed the members and guests present to reaffirm the strong support of Geneva and its financial ecosystem to FC4S in the context of the Building Bridges week. On the following day, the Building Bridges, presided by Patrick Odier, gathered international organisations, NGOs, financial sector actors and Swiss authorities to connect the worlds of finance and sustainability. The event highlighted the strong position of the Geneva financial ecosystem and Switzerland in general to lead on sustainability issues. Keynote speakers included Patrick Odier, president of the conference and chairman of the Lombard Odier board1; Fabio Sofia, president of Sustainable Finance Geneva; Sandrine Salerno, mayor of Geneva; Ueli Maurer, president of Switzerland; Peter Bakker, president and CEO of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development; and Patrick 1
See interview (in French): https://www.allnews.ch/content/interviews/mains-tendues-entre-deux-rives
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Njoroge, Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya2. Calls for the transformation of the financial system were made given the urgency of climate change; of note is the comment by André Hoffman of Roche that “short-term profit maximization has destroyed the planet”3. On 10 October, a special meeting on Sustainable Finance for African Financial Centres also took place at the Palais des Nations to formally launch the regional network and work programme around the five FC4S African members. The objectives of this programme are to encourage strategic action by individual financial centres, conduct collaboration with peers across the continent, and facilitate engagement with major international hubs. Speakers at the event included Elliot Harris, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development and Chief Economist, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Pierre Maudet, State Councillor, State of Geneva; Patrick Njoroge, Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya; Mohammed Omran, Executive Chairman, Financial Regulatory Authority of Egypt; and Mark Halle, Senior Advisor, FC4S Africa. Ma Jun, Director of the Tsinghua National Institute of Financial Research Center for Finance and Development, also delivered some remarks. The whole Inquiry team gathered on 11 October for a retreat to discuss the 2019 achievements, hear from UNEP FI, the Sustainable Digital Finance Alliance (SDFA) and the Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP) about ongoing partnerships and collaboration, and discuss the way forward for the Inquiry in 2020.
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See interview (in French): https://www.letemps.ch/economie/patrick-njoroge-banque-centrale-kenya-financedurable-un-marathon-deja-commence 3 See article: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/10/10/business/10reuters-roche-sustainability.html
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List of Participants First Name
Last Name
Organisation
Financial Center
Members Mory Mercedes Angel Josep Annie Mohammed Lamia Said
Soumahoro Monserrate Tello Soler Zhou Omran Merzouki Ibrahimi
Abidjan Finance City Abu Dhabi Global Market Barcelona Centre Financer Europeu INSTITUT D'ESTUDIS FINANCERS Beijing Green Finance Association Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) Casablanca Finance City Authority Casablanca Finance City Authority
Abidjan Abu Dhabi Barcelona Barcelona Beijing Cairo Casablanca Casablanca
Karsten Dominique Andy Benjamin Emmanuel Maranna Ursula
Loeffler Habegger Sloan McQuhae Etaderhi Igbokwe Finsterwald
Susana Simi Robert J. Nicolas Juan Carlos Alba Cecilia Sara Pierre Pierre-Alix
Escรกria Shah Jarvis Mackel Delrieu Aguilar Priego Latapi Lovisolo Ducret Binet
Kong Xing'an Yin Yiting Yiying Cecilia Junko Yoshinao Jennifer Sabine Jean
Wei Ge Lin Chen Chen Repinski Yamamoto Ogawa Reynolds Dobeli Laville
Frankfurt School - UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance DE PURY PICTET TURRETTINI & CIE S.A. Guernsey Finance Green Finance Task Force FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange Liechtenstein Bankers Association Ministry of Environment and Energy Transition, Portugal City of London Corporation Luxembourg for Finance Luxembourg for Finance SPANISH BANKING ASSOCIATION Consejo Consultivo de Finanzas Verdes Consejo Consultivo de Finanzas Verdes Centro Finanziario Italiano per la Sostenbilita Finance For Tomorrow Finance For Tomorrow Lujiazui Financial City Green Finance Committee China Emissions Exchange China Emissions Exchange China Emissions Exchange China Emissions Exchange Stockholm Green Digital Finance Tokyo Metropolitan Government Tokyo Metropolitan Government Toronto Financial Services Alliance Swiss Sustainable Finance Swiss Sustainable Finance 5
Frankfurt Geneva Guernsey Hong Kong Lagos Lagos Liechtenstein Lisbon London Luxembourg Luxembourg Madrid Mexico Mexico Milan Paris Paris Shanghai Shenzhen Shenzhen Shenzhen Shenzhen Stockholm Tokyo Tokyo Toronto Zurich Zurich
Observers Emine Nicholas Nozipho Marcus Michele Laura Massimo Valentina Ingmar Liesel Heather
Ertugrul Niggli Bardill Rothen Cardona Platchkov Bloch Calo Schuurmans Van Ast Kirk
ClimateKIC Canton of Geneva Ambassador EDA I4CE FOEN SECO UNDP South Pole UNEP FI University of Zurich
Flavia Morgan Martin
Martins Sant'Anna Perlingeiro Despres Spolc
CVM- Securities and Exchange Commission of Brazil NGFS European Commission
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Johannesburg
Sao Paolo