ThaiNGO

Position Title      :             Sustainable Finance consultancy

Work location     :              Flexible

Report to             :              Partnership and Operation Director

Employment duration     :              3 months

Background

WWF is working globally with banks, insurers, regulators and others for more than a decade to ensure the financial system recognizes nature’s true value.

We’re demonstrating how risks like climate change, water scarcity and biodiversity loss affect investments – and how to respond. For example, we’re pressing financial institutions to align their portfolios with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement – meaning they’d only invest in companies and projects that contribute to keeping the global temperature rise well below 2°C.
 
We’re also encouraging greater investment in sustainable development, and working with the finance sector to develop new ways of mobilizing resources for conserving and restoring nature.  And by pushing finance institutions to demand and reward high environmental standards among their clients, we’re using their influence to drive sustainable practices through the rest of the economy.

Our approach to sustainable finance leverages:

• Our conservation experience on the ground across WWF’s global practices.
• Our partnerships with companies on key issues such as climate, energy, food and water to drive sustainability.
• Our participation in cutting-edge sustainable finance initiatives (e.g. Science Based Targets initiative and the European Commission’s Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance).

This has allowed us to strengthen lending and investment criteria for key industry sectors, provide insights and data on environmental and social risks, fulfil critical research gaps, help unlock innovations in sustainable finance products and convene key stakeholders to progress the sustainable finance agenda.

WWF has become a recognized brand in the finance sector:

• WWF is one of the founding partners behind the Task Force for Nature Related Disclosure was launched in 2020, in an effort toto standardize nature-related disclosures to shift finance from nature-negative to nature- positive.
• WWF is one of the founding partners behind the Science-Based Targets Network, and is leading the Finance Workstream of the program. 
• WWF is the only NGO to be an observing member of the Network on Greening the Financial System.
• WWF launched multiple finance-related initiatives with the United Nations, including the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance.

One of the in-house WWF projects with helped to move the financial sector is The Sustainable Banking Assessment.

SUSBA tool shows year-on-year changes and highlights progression or regression in banks’ performance on the integration of environmental and social (E&S) considerations in their corporate strategy and decision-making process. 

Objectives of SUSBA are:

• Highlight the potential for the financial sector to drive sustainable development in Global South
• Provide a decision-useful assessment framework that incorporates environmental and social issues most relevant to specific regions.
• Help stakeholders assess banks’ management of climate risk amid strong global support for the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework, UNEPFI Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB), and other initiatives.
• Help shareholders, potential investors, regulators and civil society representatives to track banks’ progress and performance on ESG integration by displaying the evolution of results year-on-year.
• Present the results in an online interactive platform that allows users to compare selected banks and indicators based on their preferences.

Methodology

The existing SUSBA tool assesses the public disclosures of 36 listed banks across six ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), 10 major banks in Japan and Korea, and an additional eight international banks active in the region.

The assessment framework comprises six pillars and 11 indicators, that signify what WWF considers to be robust ESG integration. The assessment is performed against 76 sub-indicators, with binary “yes/no” answers.

We developed this framework with reference to:

• Existing international frameworks, standards and initiatives, including:
• GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines,
• International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC)’s International
• Integrated Reporting Framework
  TCFD recommendations
• Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)
• Relevant national principles and guidelines on sustainability reporting.
• Specific environmental and social issues most relevant to Asia Pacific.
• Deep science-based insights rooted in our global network of sustainability experts.

To provide a more comprehensive data set against which Asia Pacific banks can benchmark themselves, the tool includes assessments of select international banks that are active in the Asia Pacific loan market. Although SUSBA remains an Asia-focussed tool, banks in the region may find it useful to compare themselves against international banks that began their ESG integration journey earlier.

To highlight the progress that banks have made on ESG integration, the assessment results also display improvements or regressions (indicated in green and red, respectively). To view the detailed assessment results and benefit from the tool’s full functionalities, users can visit our Assessment page.

The assessment of ESG integration focuses only on the banks’ indirect footprint, i.e. its exposure to ESG risks and impacts through client relationships, as opposed to the bank’s direct footprint (e.g. building energy consumption, paper consumption, and staff travel). There is a broad consensus among various stakeholders (investors, regulators, civil society) that while the management of direct impacts is important, indirect risks and impacts are far more significant, and should form the backbone of any bank’s sustainability strategy.

The assessment focuses on the banks’ corporate/wholesale activities. Retail banking, private banking, and asset management divisions are excluded.

Bank information reviewed for the assessment included only publicly available, English-language disclosures in the form of the relevant fiscal year annual reports, sustainability reports or corporate social responsibility reports, as well as information posted on corporate websites such as company policies, statements, investor presentations and press releases. These public disclosures represent what is available to international investors and stakeholders looking to develop an understanding of how banks are managing climate and ESG risks and opportunities so as to contribute to sustainable development. The banks were not interviewed and have not verified the information contained in this report.

Along with updates on the website, SUSBA project publishes a narrative report annually as well as conducts communication strategy in national markets in the countries included in the assessment.

List of past reports:

https://www.wwf.sg/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/report-2017-compressed.pdf

https://www.wwf.sg/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/report-2018-compressed.pdf

https://www.wwf.sg/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/report-2019-compressed.pdf

https://www.wwf.sg/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/report-2020.pdf

https://www.wwf.sg/susba/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/01/SUSBA-2021-FINAL.pdf

https://www.wwf.sg/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Assessing-Banks-Seafood-Sector-Policies.pdf

https://www.wwf.sg/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Sustainable-Banking-Assessment-2022.pdf

Examples of press release:

https://www.wwf.sg/wwf-singapores-sustainable-banking-assessment-2022-finds-that-despite-increasing-net-zero-commitments-asian-banks-also-need-to-focus-on-nature-related-risks/

The target of the communication strategy is to get coverage by key media outlets in each target country with preference to financial outlets incl. tv and radio interviews.

Sector policies:

In 2020, WWF added sector specific assessments to dig deeper into the scope and quality of banks’ E&S integration approaches for key sectors, starting with energy and palm oil. In 2023 WWF added seafood sector.

Other WWF relevant tools:

SUSBA is part of the suite of the in-house developed WWF tools. Others include:

RESPOND - Resilient and Sustainable Portfolios that Protect Nature and Drive Decarbonisation is a tool developed by WWF that reviews asset managers’ disclosures about their implementation of responsible investment (RI). The tool is based on a WWF framework that represents a best-practice architecture for RI that is also aligned with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI).

SUSREG - is intended to provide practical guidance on the integration of environmental & social considerations in financial regulations, supervisory expectations and monetary policy.

Objectives of consultancy

The objective of this consultancy is to help WWF launch Latin America chapter of SUSBA project (currently on Asian Chapter exists).  In 2019, WWF did a short internal report (to be shared separately) where 32 banks in 8 countries were assessed. The target of this year project is to become a public communication. We would like to focus on Columbia, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay.

• Adapt the interactive Sustainable Banking Assessment (SUSBA) tool developed by WWF Singapore for the evaluation of financial institutions in Thailand

• Establish a regional benchmarking framework for the financial sector and promote the adoption of environmental and social (ES) considerations in FI policies
• Generate a productive dialogue with financial institutions to strengthen the effectiveness of our strategies in the field by pushing the financial sector to require more sustainable production practices
• Promote WWF as important stakeholder and partner in financial sectors of Thailand.
• Highlight key recent development in green finance in those markets and understand performance of banks vs level of national green finance regulation
• Understand the need to develop specific assessment frameworks to dig deeper into the scope and quality of banks’ E&S integration approaches
• Develop relationship with banks to open opportunity for engagement and capacity building (e.g. distribution of WWF ASFI Academy and Thailand Academy- e-learning platform on green finance) 

Work-Plan (Inception Report)

• Within 3 days of project inception the consultant will meet with the green finance team to be trained on SUSBA project and methodology.
• Within 4 days after training the consultant needs to provide: a) A list of largest banks in each country which publish sustainability reports, last date of published annual report, expected date of upcoming annual report publishing b) A detailed plan of the project with deadlines and proposed touch points with WWF green finance team

The deliverables:

• Review the framework and proposition to add 2-3 questions on sectors specific to Thailand context
• Prepare the list of banks to be assessed
• Assess the banks using WWF assessment framework according to WWF excel template (templates will be shared during training)
• Prepare the narrative report with graphs (in similar style as all previous SUSBA reports – shared above)
• Support for WWF national teams to share preliminary results with assessed banks (before launch each bank usually gets the right to see his own results, when such relationship between WWF and the bank exists), national regulator and other relevant stakeholder e.g banking association
• Ensure translation of assessments into HTML language before the upload of the results into the web platform
• Develop narrative for the Thailand chapter of SUSBA webpage (the website itself will be developed by existing SUSBA developer by adding dedicated space for Thailand banks)
• Develop communication plan in each market together with local WWF communication teams and develop key communication materials (master press release which then can be adapted by national communication teams, Q&A, presentation)

Competencies

• Good knowledge of international development context and main players on the environment, conservation and economic development context and priorities.
• Research and analytical skills, including data gathering and analysing information using both qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Ability to work in multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural teams.
• Ability to contextualize global trends in accordance with the current dynamics 
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to write clearly and succinctly and communicate effectively.

Qualifications and Experience

• Master's degree in finance, economics, environment management, or in relevant fields.
• 5 years in business administration or finance especially credit and risk management with interest or understanding of sustainability concept.
• 3 years in middle management in finance sector.
• Knowledgeable in Risk Management, Credit Risk, Project Management and Proposal Development.
• Understanding of environmental sustainability relate to business risks and opportunities.
• Fluent in English and Thai.

• Demonstrated previous experience in sustainable finance assignments, ESG & data analysis and report writing
• Experience working with NGO clients.

Language Requirements:

Fluency in English, Thai is required.

Payments

WWF will pay 20% at inception report submission, 40% upon submission of the draft report, and 40% upon presentation and approval of the final report.

Time Frame

The deadline for submitting the study will be stipulated in the contract signed between the consultant and WWF. The contract will be signed virtually.

Tender Documents

To apply please submit a copy of CV(s) of intended contractor, 1-2 page proposal including outline of methodology, time-frame and budget by xx May midnight CET to the following email

address: yvityananan@wwf.or.th, pornpitakp@wwf.or.th, apichayaa@wwf.or.th

Single consultant, applications from 2 or more individuals, or a consultancy firm welcome.

Confidentiality Clause

The consultant should respect the confidential nature of all information acquired during this consultancy.

WWF is the sole copyright owner of the products stemming from this consultancy.

Other contractual provisions will be shared with the selected candidate during contract negotiation.