THE Bankers Association of the Philippines is encouraging its members to adopt environmental and sustainability measures in their daily operations after BAP executives cited recent talks with several environmental and financial stakeholders.
In their recently held forum in Makati City, the BAP bared partnerships with various international associations to encourage local banks to incorporate environmental, social and governance and sustainability principles into their corporate strategy, risk management and bank operations framework.
These institutions include the German Ministry for the Environment and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific, among others.
“Our country lies at the epicenter of climate change. As banks, we must find a win-win situation where we can continue to remain profitable, despite the risks involved in sustainable financing,” BAP President Cezar P. Consing said at the forum. “We all should be part of this transformation journey of creating a resilient economy. We should make what we do profitable so it can be sustainable.”
In line with this, Consing said the BAP is building a program to assist its members in their respective sustainability journey.
While no details have been provided yet, a BAP document said the program will be managed in partnership with nongovernment group World Wildlife Fund Inc. The BAP said they would also offer guidance to individual banks that want to integrate environmental, social and governance principles in their respective business models.
“As economically minded people, we all react to sensible measures. What gets measured gets managed,” Consing said.
The BAP president also noted that in the past few months, sustainability has found proponents among executives of the Philippine Securities Exchange. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas have introduced guidelines, frameworks, regulations and tools to encourage sustainable lending, business practices and disclosures.
“The world’s leading institutional investors are increasingly demanding publicly listed companies to operate on sustainability and ESG frameworks,” Consing said. He added that Philippine banks are “hell-bent” on catching up, despite being behind their peers in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in integrating environmental, social and governance and sustainability principles.