“Hong Kong, as an international financial centre, is also a knowledge hub,” said Ma Jun, chairman of co-organiser the Capacity Building Alliance for Sustainable Investment (CASI). “CASI’s event will bring together more than 30 speakers with knowledge on sustainable finance from Hong Kong, mainland China, Europe, North America, Australia, East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.”
A former economist at Deutsche Bank, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Ma is chairman of the IFS and the Hong Kong Green Finance Association.
Launched at the COP28 World Climate Summit in December, CASI is an international collaboration platform providing training and knowledge sharing on sustainable finance in developing countries. Its predecessor, the Green Finance Leadership Programme hosted by IFS, has organised 30 green finance training events over the past five years.
CASI has 50 member institutions, including financial companies, non-governmental organizations and higher education institutions, primarily from Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
Founding members include the IFS, the HKMA, the Beijing-backed Silk Road Fund, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, professional standards body CFA Institute, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank.
CASI, which hosted its first in-person event in Brazil in April, plans to follow the Hong Kong conference with similar events in the Middle East and Central Asia in late 2024 and Africa and Southeast Asia next year, Ma said. CASI aims to train up to 100,000 sustainable finance professionals by 2030 through in-person and online programs.
After the event in Hong Kong, about 130 participants will embark on a two-day site visit to Huzhou city in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province, the hub of green finance pilot projects.
“Huzhou has performed best among the first eight cities in China where the green finance pilot program was launched in 2017,” Ma said. “Participants will visit local banks to learn how the sustainability rating system works and tour a local government platform that matches green projects with financial institutions.”
Huzhou’s green loans have grown at an average annual rate of 40 percent since 2017 and now account for nearly a third of total loans extended in the city, compared with 12 percent nationally and 2 percent in some emerging markets, Ma said.
Small and medium-sized enterprises can receive loan interest subsidies from local governments if they achieve certain sustainability ratings.
Charles Nguyen, head of ESG investing in Asia at fund manager Neuberger Berman, one of the speakers at the CASI event, said talent development was a key challenge facing many Asian and emerging markets.
“ESG [environment, social and governance] As the investment environment becomes more complex, financial professionals will need to have greater technical knowledge, for example of climate change mitigation and adaptation solutions.”
Other common challenges include insufficient quantitative disclosure of ESG information and relatively light penalties for greenhouse gas emissions, he noted.
Nguyen said companies in emissions-heavy sectors are likely to face increased costs as major Asian financial markets adopt international sustainability disclosure standards over the next few years and governments raise carbon taxes and expand emissions trading schemes to meet climate targets.
He added that with increased regulatory and investor attention to climate-related risks and opportunities, companies will face increased scrutiny on the robustness and credibility of their climate change transition plans, including their level of ambition, short- and medium-term targets, strategies and capital allocation.
