By Nneka Nwogwugwu
The 2022 Sustainable Finance Awards have announced over 10 banks who won awards globally for being instruments which achieved environmental and social sustainability financing.
Access Bank, Nigeria, won the regional awards (Africa) for Outstanding Leadership in ESG-Related Loans.
The awards were published on Global Finance magazine on Saturday.
Nigeria’s Access Bank found innovative ways to combine green finance with support of its local communities.
In 2021, for instance, it issued a $41 million green bond—certified by the Climate Bonds Initiative and verified by PwC—whose proceeds were to be used to finance ESG-oriented projects like flood defense, including protection for 400,000 Nigerian residents against flooding and preservation of more than 1,000 acres of land from rising sea levels.
Green financing grew by about 10% in 2021 and accounted for about 5% of the bank’s total financial offerings.
The first winner for the regional (Africa) Awards is STANDARD BANK which won awards for Outstanding Leadership in Sustainable Finance, Outstanding Leadership in Social Bonds, Outstanding Leadership in Transition/Sustainability-Linked Loans and Outstanding Leadership in Sustainable Infrastructure Finance.
Access Bank came 4th in ranking while Nedbank came second and Ecobank came third position.
For global winners, SOCIETE GENERALE won the Overall Outstanding Leadership in Sustainable Finance while STANDARD CHARTERED won Outstanding Leadership in Social Bonds and Outstanding Sustainable Financing in Emerging Markets.
Global and regional awards criteria for evaluation include governance policies and goals, achievements in environmental and social sustainability financing, industry leadership and third-party assessments.
This award program covers the activities from January 2021 to December 2021.
Sustainable Finance looks at the market for financial products to support renewable energies and the transition to sustainable business practices with sustainability-linked bonds and loans soaring in growth.
Sustainable Finance is no longer only about green projects for green companies. It is increasingly about corporations such as utility companies with high carbon emissions—often referred to as “brown” industries—raising funds for general business purposes but consenting along the way to cut greenhouse gas emissions or draw more power from renewable energy sources.
And if they fail to hit their performance targets, then they pay investors a higher rate for their borrowed money. This roughly describes the structure of sustainability-linked financing, which exploded in 2021—only two years after Italy’s Enel Group issued the world’s first sustainability-linked bond (SLB) in 2019.