Taking a concerted European approach to sustainable development

The European Banking Federation (EBF) and the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) have just issued a report, Testing the application of the EU Taxonomy to core banking products, providing high-level recommendations to enhance banks’ usability of the EU taxonomy. This launch was also followed by an online event attended by Natixis on “Corporate loans & data challenges”.

The goal behind this EU taxonomy is to assess whether an economic activity is environmentally sustainable and subsequently categorize it according to its environmental impact.

This testing initiative kicked off in March 2020 and involved several months’ work by teams at Groupe BPCE and particularly its subsidiary Natixis – the ESR department and the Green & Sustainable Hub at Corporate & Investment Banking – alongside 25 other European banks, as they tested using the taxonomy in a very practical way and assessed the complexity of its implementation across a spectrum of clients from different business sectors and geographies.

Natixis contributed with analyzing taxonomy compliance of 4 live or recently closed transactions amongst the 26 case studies that are published in the report.

This is a key milestone for Natixis, which is the first bank to actively manage its balance sheet’s climate impact with the Green Weighting Factor , rolled out in September 2019, and more broadly speaking for Groupe BPCE, which signed the Principles for Responsible Banking.

Their goal is to strategically align their businesses with the United Nations sustainable development goals and the Paris Agreement on the climate.

Natixis is committed to supporting the environment and driving a sustainable economy. The company is also determined to accompany its clients in their own transition, and with this in mind it published a report in September 2020 to help investors and issuers prepare for use of the taxonomy.