About
The Banking Environment Initiative (BEI) achieves its mission of leading the banking industry in collectively directing capital towards environmentally and socially sustainable economic development by focusing on topics where industry-wide action is needed, including focus areas such as the decarbonisation of the global economy and the protection and restoration of nature. Further, BEI achieves its mission by working in partnership with its customer base by bringing independent thinking to bear on the issues and through the active leadership of its Chief Executives.
The vision of BEI is to be recognised as a group of influential international and regional banks that have, through its learning and leadership, played a significant role in transforming how corporate value chains are financed.
Who does it impact?
Through research, knowledge generation and dialogue with industry partners, the Banking Environment Initiative aims to lead the banking industry as a whole in collectively directing capital towards environmentally and socially sustainable economic development. As such, the use of tools, guides, etc. is voluntary.
Status: Launched
Created in 2010 by the Chief Executives of some of the world’s largest banks with the support of the Prince of Wales.
The Banking Environment Initiative is convened by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), which also provides the Secretariat.
Relation to other initiatives and regulations
The Banking Environment Initiative engages in the regulatory debate, including the EU and China, to evolve a level playing field for sustainable business models.
For example, the BEI has served as a Knowledge Partner to the G20 Green Finance Study Group and is represented on the European Commission's High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance.
Participants
The initiative consists of ABN-AMRO, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Natwest Group, Santander and Standard Chartered.
Thommessen's comments
By being a voluntary-based initiative and representative for a not-for-profit group where the individual member bank is granted great flexibility in their implementation of the standards and recommendations, BEI represents an uncontroversial initiative working to promote sustainable economic growth.
BEI is known for its work in driving change in how banks support a sustainable economy through global agricultural supply chains.
Among the main initiatives is the Soft Commodities Compact (the Compact). It was created in collaboration with the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), to achieve zero net deforestation by 2020 in the soft commodity industry. The Compact consists of standards for banks to follow when developing their policies and processes. The banks' compliance with the Compact is, however, fully voluntary and self-governed.