Library | Sustainable Finance Practices
Strategy and Organisational change
Guidance on embedding sustainability into organisational strategy, leadership, governance, culture, and systems to drive long-term transformation.
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ADS group: UK defence ESG charter
The UK Defence ESG Charter sets a voluntary, sector-wide framework for defence companies, covering climate transition, societal impact, and governance and ethics. It promotes decarbonisation, supply chain responsibility, skills development, ethical conduct, and collaboration, while allowing signatories to retain individual ESG strategies.
Heterogeneity in corporate sustainability initiatives and stock returns
The study shows only transformative sustainability initiatives predict higher future profitability and generate positive abnormal stock returns. Advocacy, preparation and standard ESG ratings do not. Markets initially mispriced transformative actions, but learning gradually eliminated the alpha by 2022.
A review of the link between sustainability performance and company valuation
The report reviews recent evidence on links between sustainability performance and company valuation, finding growing but uneven market recognition. Strong strategies can improve resilience, EBITDA and capital costs, while inaction raises long-term financial risk amid evolving disclosure and regulation.
Still or sparkling?: Approaches to changing portfolio compositions in long-term stress-tests and scenario analyses
The report reviews approaches to modelling portfolio changes in long-term climate stress tests, comparing static portfolios with macro, ex ante, and ex post adjustments. It outlines trade-offs, shows results are sensitive to assumptions, and argues approach choice should match supervisory objectives.
The insurability imperative: Using insurance to navigate the climate transition
This report argues that insurability is a strategic indicator of financial viability in a climate-disrupted economy. It explains how insurance, risk modelling, resilience investment, and policy alignment shape access to capital, asset values, and transition finance, urging leaders to embed insurability into decision-making.
Building resilient supply chains: Getting the most out of supplier engagement
The report outlines how climate-related risks threaten supply chains and presents seven practical steps to strengthen resilience through supplier engagement. It stresses clear objectives, data use, prioritisation, incentives and cross-functional collaboration to drive emissions reduction, improve transparency and align procurement with long-term sustainability and risk-management goals.
Circular transformation of industries: The role of partnerships
This World Economic Forum white paper asserts that strategic partnerships are crucial for scaling circular economy initiatives. It details three value-creation archetypes: circular feedstock, lifespan extension, and platform services. Collaboration enables organisations to secure resources, optimise costs, and drive systemic change, effectively decoupling growth from resource consumption.
AI and ESG: An introductory guide for ESG practitioners
This guide outlines how artificial intelligence intersects with environmental, social and governance practice, highlighting opportunities to scale ESG outcomes alongside material risks. It introduces responsible AI principles, regulatory context, assessment frameworks and practical examples to support informed, ethical AI adoption by ESG practitioners.
Tackling the transformation: The challenges of operationalizing corporate sustainability goals and how to overcome them
ERM’s Transformation Survey analyses global corporate progress in operationalising sustainability goals. It finds stronger performance on social issues than climate or nature, identifies weak sustainability-linked incentives as the main barrier, and highlights underinvestment in training, incentives, and ESG data systems.
Artificial intelligence and human capital: Challenges for central banks
The report outlines how AI copilots and agents could reshape central bank roles, requiring extensive upskilling, revised workforce strategies and stronger governance. Talent shortages, regulatory constraints and cultural adaptation present key challenges as institutions transition to more AI-intensive operations.
Blueprint for intelligent economies: AI competitiveness through regional collaboration
The report outlines a framework for building intelligent economies through sustainable AI infrastructure, diverse datasets and ethical guardrails. It highlights collaboration across sectors and regions to support inclusive AI adoption, guide investment, strengthen governance and enable responsible technological development.
International round table: Financing climate action at city level
This report synthesises discussions from an international round table on financing city-level climate action, highlighting how local governments overcome fiscal constraints through tailored funding scales, partnerships, innovative revenue mechanisms, and long-term approaches to deliver major decarbonisation programmes across Europe and North America.
Competing in the age of disruption: A business briefing by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership
The report argues that global industrial transition is inevitable and accelerating, creating material risks and opportunities. It urges businesses to pursue innovation, reshape market rules and influence policy to secure competitiveness, manage systemic threats and drive sustainable market transformation.
Creating value from big data in the investment management process: A workflow analysis
The report analyses how investment professionals use AI and big data, noting moderate but rising adoption, multihoming across tools, and key challenges including skills gaps, data quality, and model opacity. It highlights organisational priorities such as upskilling and workflow automation to enhance efficiency and decision making.
AI governance behind the scenes: Emerging practices for AI impact assessments
The report outlines emerging organisational practices for AI impact assessments, highlighting common process steps, information gathering challenges, evolving risk-assessment methods, and difficulties evaluating mitigation effectiveness. It notes increasing cross-functional governance, reliance on third-party transparency, and the need for stronger metrics, education, and executive support.
Royal Bank of Canada (RBC): Partnering with survivor support organisations to increase financial access
This case study explains how the Royal Bank of Canada piloted and expanded a financial access programme for survivors of human trafficking, using a risk based approach to customer identification and verification. It shows how regulated banks can advance financial inclusion while meeting compliance requirements through partnerships with support organisations.