Around the globe, a wave of innovation is sweeping across the financial sector, from public equities to bonds, real estate to insurance, venture investing to small-business lending. In each of these areas, innovative players are using an ever-growing range of instruments to achieve social and environmental benefits, while producing attractive returns. This is the exciting field of sustainable finance, and it is growing fast. Nowhere is the opportunity for sustainable finance greater than in Asia, and only a sliver of this opportunity has been realized.
Top Takeaways
- Around the globe, sustainable finance is expanding both in terms of the instruments deployed and the issue areas it seeks to target. An ever-growing range of innovations has emerged across private and public equities, bonds, real asset investments, and even insurance, and are being used to address an increasingly diversified array of social and environmental issues.
- Financial services providers are increasingly moving into sustainable finance, as it has been shown to produce strong returns and can address risks that have emerged from decades of resource-intensive economic growth—such as those associated with climate change—which threaten their long-term sustainability.
- Asia is witnessing a wave of innovation in sustainable finance, demonstrating a strengthening interest in the sector. This momentum sends a strong signal of the potential for sustainable finance to grow in key Asian economies and catch up with more developed markets such as the United States and Europe.
