Financial Services Industry
The Challenge
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Financial Service organisations are finding themselves increasingly in the sustainability spotlight as a result of their powerful and enabling role in the business world. The sector is subject to increasing scrutiny because:
- A few spectacularly bad decisions have focused both public opinion and media attention on particular companies and sectors
- Governments recognise that one way to effect change is to regulate
- Increasingly wealthy and articulate investors are demanding that those
companies with whom they invest match their ethical stance.
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The financial sector is particularly well placed and incentivised to effect change as:
- The global nature of Project Finance, Insurance and Re-insurance, the money markets and Mergers and Acquisitions means that relatively small shifts can reap enormous financial and environmental rewards
- The business acumen upon which these companies build their reputations suggests that they are forward looking organisations making clever investments for the future
- Their influence over the business and investment choices of others reflects a direct responsibility for the impacts, good and bad, that result.
Increasingly, CSR has become a boardroom issue for the industry. Preventing damage to their reputations and capitalising on new opportunities in a highly competitive industry with increasingly low customer loyalty focuses the mind. Mechanisms like The Equator Principles, FTSE4Good, Dow Jones Sustainability Index do more than heighten consumer expectation of achievable standards. They enable investors to assess who they would prefer to do business with when protecting their own CSR reputations. |
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How We Can Help
Thirdwave has monitored and assessed levels of activity
in the financial services community for opportunity and
risk against sustainability drivers and criteria since the
late 1990s. Working closely, with and for, these global
players we are able to provide insight into finance trends,
changing political landscapes, consumer expectations and
emerging trends. We apply this expertise through strategy
and policy
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recommendations, customised decision support tools for in-house use
by clients, direct project support, critical analysis of projects,
programmes and plans.
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Economic benefits – we can help you:
- Reduce unforeseen risks to activities and the ability to trade
- Identify opportunities to maximise return on investment
- Support the management of existing assets by quantifying the sustainability costs and benefits of potential projects for both now and the future.
Environmental benefits – we can help you:
- Increase the long term security, performance and resilience of business assets
- Identify, measure and reduce the negative environmental impacts such as pollution, toxicity, waste and CO2 related to direct business activities and property holdings
- Audit, quantify and outline any unrealised assets within a business.
Social benefits – we can help you:
- Identify emerging trends and opportunities
- Analyse stakeholder expectations / pressures and their implications
- Improve the quality of employee operating conditions and related health, well-being and productivity
- Analyse how financial services most effectively serve and benefit from CSR and
regeneration projects
- Identify potential successful partnerships for promoting sustainability projects.
Examples of work in Financial Services by Thirdwave >> |
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