We hope you were able to join us for our regional showcase Day 1 of Ethical Finance 2021 as planned. In a fitting tribute to broader conversations around World Ocean Day 2021, Day 1 of Ethical Finance 2021 brought together a fascinating range of discussions featuring experts from Australasia, South East Asia, South Asia and West Africa. Common global challenges such as inclusion and diversity (notably around gender), as well as ongoing Covid-19 recovery emerged across the panels. The global steps needed to implement sustainable finance strategic and integrate ESG frameworks into investment models were equally prevalent across each of panel sessions.
Like many of you, we were impacted by today’s global web outage which also affected Amazon, The New York Times, Reddit, The UK Government, and the Guardian. We would like to apologise to those of you who were impacted by our technical difficulties experienced at the start of the South Asia session. Unfortunately, our video platform Vimeo was impacted by the global internet outage. We hope you were able to access the backup stream that we quickly implemented, and that the rest of the summit will proceed with any issues.
You can find summaries of each of our sessions below.
Session 1: Australasia
We kicked off the Australasia Regional Showcase session with a keynote from Chris Whitehead, the CEO of FINSIA drawing on Australasia’s economic recovery post COVID to increasing Climate Change concerns in the area. The panel was led by Giles Gunesekera, the CEO of the Global Impact Initiative. Panel members included Katherine Tapley, Head of Sustainable Finance at ANZ; Lucy Thomas, Head of Investment Stewardship at NSW Treasury Corporation; Talieh Williams, Head of Investment Stewardship at VFMC; and finally Dr Stuart Palmer, Head of Ethics Research at Australian Ethical Investment. Topics discussed included frameworks for measuring sustainability and social impact, systems thinking, defining ESG, and the importance of regulations.
Session 2: South East Asia
Cecile Thioro Niang, Lead Economist at the World Bank Group began the showcase with an overview of the South East Asia region making a clear economic case for financing climate action and increasing finance for transition, as well as the importance of Green Finace in ASEAN nations.
You can see the whole of Cecile’s Thioro Niang’s speech on YouTube.
The panel was led by Prasad Padmanaban, Chief Executive of AICB. He was joined by Dr Hamim Syahrum, Deputy Director of Islamic Banking & Takaful, Bank Negara Malaysia; Lavanya Rama Iyer, Head of Policy & Climate Change at WWF Malaysia, Cedric Rimaud, Fund Manager at Earthwake Green Impact Fund, David Smith, Head of Corporate Governance, Asia Pacific at Aberdeen Standard Investments, and finally, Rafe Haneef, Chief Executive Officer of Group Transaction Banking & Group Chief Sustainability Officer at CIMB.
You can head over to our twitter page to see snippets from our panel discussions throughout the session.
Session 3: South Asia
Madame Sima Kamil, Deputy Governor at the State Bank of Pakistan began our South Asia session with a regional overview of South Asia.
Watch Sima Kamil’s speech in full on Youtube
The panel was led by GM Abbasi, Director of Islamic Banking Division at the State Bank of Pakistan. The panel members in this regional overview are Azhar Aslam, Head of Islamic Banking & Governance Head Central & North Region at Standard Chartered Bank; Mujahid Zuberi, Head Corporate & Investment Banking, Pakistan at Dubai Islamic Bank; Dr. Shah Md. Ahsan Habib, Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM); Muhammad Shoaib, CEO at Al Meezan Investment Management; Khawlah Usman, Director of Marketing & Sales at The Institute of Bankers Pakistan.
Session 4: West Africa
Arise News Anchor Boason Omofaye, and Al Hamdou Dorsouma, Division Manager, Climate and Green Growth at African Development Bank provided a regional overview of West Africa to begin our showcase, emphasising the need for finance, particularly private finance, to contribute to climate resilience in West Africa and offsetting the devastating impacts of climate change on major industries across the region.
The session was led by Abdelkader Benbrahim, Partnership Coordinator for Making Finance Work for Africa. Panel members for the West Africa regional showcase are Elsie Addo Awadzi, Deputy Governor at Bank of Ghana; Garba Mohammed, Group Head Sales, Non-Interest Banking at Sterling Bank Plc.; Karima Ola, Partner at LeapFrog Investments; Jules Ngankam, Group CEO at African Guarantee Fund; and finally, Hajara Adeola, CEO & Managing Director at Lotus Capital.
Tomorrow, we will shift our focus to nature and climate ahead of the crucial COP26 UN climate summit for Day 2 of Ethical Finance 2021 ‘Sustainability’. With sessions exploring global trends, net zero and nature and biodiversity, the day will be an opportunity to understand both the macroeconomic issues facing the world beyond World Ocean Day, and will position some of the key tools available to address them.