Sustainable Investment: Sharing Best Practices With Central Bankers 2022 | Green Finance Platform | 24 May 2022 | Webinar

Central banks are increasingly considering climate change in their analysis and policies. If proactively using their monetary and prudential tools to contribute to mitigate it remains controversial for most of them, a simple and straight way for them to translate this recent interest into action is to decarbonize their non-monetary portfolios. Indeed, much like private financial institutions, many central banks manage investment portfolios to finance themselves, handle the pensions of their staff and/or serve the financial interests of third-parties. Unfortunately, these portfolios often lack any material responsible investment policy and especially fail to consider the goals of the Paris Agreement. As it is, central banks lags significantly behind best practices in the private sector.

Building on this assessment, and consistently with the NGFS’ recommendations on portfolio management and the Eurosystem’s common stance for climate change-related sustainable investment, this webinar aims to contribute to the diffusion of good practices in the central banking space. It will provide central bankers with key examples of responsible investment policies that can be applied to non-monetary portfolios: the policies from the French central bank - Banque de France - and from the largest cooperative in North America - Desjardins Group.

2022 Speakers

Alexandre Gautier
Deputy General Secretary at Banque de France

Christophe Ménigault
ESG Practice Leader at Desjardins Group