SIX Sustainable Lending Webinar

Thank you for your interest in the Sustainable Lending Webinar taking place on 27th January 2025. Please read on for more details on the discussion topics, agenda and speakers. To register, please visit the form hereafter.

The virtual engagement session will be centred around sustainable banking and lending, ESG reporting, innovation, and transition management, and will bring together experts from across industry and academia.

• Sustainable debt is an important asset class to bridge the mid-cap financing challenges in Switzerland and the EU: Bank loans serve as leverage for climate-friendly investments, and are innovation-led, normative-compliant sustainable products that enable banks to steer better CO2 emissions measurements, and transition management efforts, in a targeted manner.
• The sustainable lending product landscape of Swiss retail banks has seen minimal change since last year (mortgages and corporate financing), meanwhile European and Swiss regulatory regimes are paving the way for more sustainable policies, practices and disclosures.
• Banks can refer to the HSLU study supported by SIX Financial Information for a comparison of SME sustainability assessment tools and services that support market participants with a regulatory compliant ESG data and reporting management workflow.
• Topics to be covered in the Sustainable Lending and Banking Market Practices Expert Panel:
• The sustainable lending policy and market landscape in Switzerland is under development: side by side with bi-lateral regulatory disclosure and labelling regimes in the EU, and internationally when and where ICMA’s, LMA’s and LSTA’s sustainable lending frameworks are concerned.
• Challenges and opportunities for SMEs and banks when it comes to sustainable finance lending activities remain as the current sustainable finance frameworks do not provide sufficient clarity, comparability and interoperability when it comes to normative and regulatory complexity.
• End-to-end data and workflow solutions are providing an opportunity for product innovation and digitalisation for enhanced SME corporate information disclosures and compliant banking climate risk and transition management scenarios on balance sheets. These assumptions are being backed by the new HSLU / SIX sustainable lending market study, and by Swiss Sustainable Finance’s green lending report which was published earlier this year.

• The sustainable lending policy and market landscape in Switzerland is under development: side by side with bi-lateral regulatory disclosure and labelling regimes in the EU, and internationally when and where ICMA’s, LMA’s and LSTA’s sustainable lending frameworks are concerned.
• Challenges and opportunities for SMEs and banks when it comes to sustainable finance lending activities remain as the current sustainable finance frameworks do not provide sufficient clarity, comparability and interoperability when it comes to normative and regulatory complexity.
• End-to-end data and workflow solutions are providing an opportunity for product innovation and digitalisation for enhanced SME corporate information disclosures and compliant banking climate risk and transition management scenarios on balance sheets. These assumptions are being backed by the new HSLU / SIX sustainable lending market study, and by Swiss Sustainable Finance’s green lending report which was published earlier this year.

• Green and Climate Fintech solutions are on the rise: the market for sustainability reporting software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions is estimated to grow from USD905m to USD4.35bn by the end of the decade according to Verdantix research (2023).
• The Swiss Green Fintech Network (GFN) is a multi-stakeholder initiative to grow and scale the sustainable data and solutions ecosystem. The network launched recommendations on how to structure, grow and incentivise the green fintech market to the Swiss government, and Swiss financial market actors, through the Green Fintech Action Plan in 2021.
• Sustainable lending, banking, and SME regulatory compliant reporting solutions are at the heart of GFN’s initiatives. The GFN details in its workstreams and publications how end-to-end data management, analysis and reporting workflow solutions can act as enablers for a sustainable future while meeting the needs of SMEs, banks and intermediaries for regulatory compliance and complexity management. 

We look forward to welcoming you to insightful thought leadership and product innovation debates led by knowledge experts across industry and academia.