AFR: Oliver Wyman On New Guidelines For Banks To Account For Impact On Nature

Banks and investors have a new set of guidelines to compare companies’ impact on the natural environment, after the release of formal guidance on ensuring nature is considered alongside financial, operational and climate risks.

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) issued a final framework on Tuesday aimed at shifting global financial flows away from companies damaging the environment towards those creating nature-positive outcomes, as international investors look to enforce the standards through engagement with boards of directors.

Consulting firm Oliver Wyman, research partner to the TNFD, called on banks to take “priority actions” to ensure compliance with the new disclosure framework. These include adopting a “nature positive” approach to mitigate risks, starting with “a portfolio heatmap to identify where the most significant risks, impacts, and dependencies lie in relation to nature at the sub-sector level”.

But Oliver Wyman noted there were “notable deficits” in geolocation and supply chain data, and called on banks to adopt tools for geospatial data on natural capital assets, satellite sensors and geospatial analytics.

Read the full article here (paywall).