When it comes to innovation on the ESG front in Europe, IJGlobal’s independent panel of judges was clearly impressed by NatWest having already awarded the bank the trophy for financial advisory.

The IJGlobal ESG Awards 2024 judges recognised NatWest not in a financial capacity – as a lender or a financial adviser – but on an organisational level to win this trophy.

One of the judges said: “It’s brilliant to see expertise and commitment to social, food, agriculture and other areas of necessary focus from an organisation with as long a reach as NatWest.”

Another of the judges added: “NatWest has clearly gone further than the vast majority of its peers – and companies in general – to nail its credentials in the ESG field. It is company-wide impressive.”

NatWest has developed an integrated, product agnostic approach to ESG, with a central ESG team working alongside its sector and product specialist teams to implement the most applicable financing for our customers’ ESG journeys.

This holistic approach allows its ESG teams to work with customers across multiple treasury workstreams – from capital markets to FX – and build on the learnings from each client to innovate.

According to the submission: “NatWest continuously innovates through new offerings, assisting clients beyond financing, including offerings for ESG ratings, reporting, investor engagement, and Scope 3 solutions – e.g. NatWest provides Tesco’s and McCains suppliers access to discounted carbon reduction equipment finance, potential discounts on renewable energy assets and know-how to reduce Scope 3 supply chain emissions.

“We seek to excel in ESG thought leadership and intellectual content, publishing ESG research and thought pieces at a pace which is in line with consulting and academic institutions.”

Over the course of FY 2023, NatWest published more than 200 thought leadership / content pieces across multiple formats – research pieces, newsletters, webinars, podcasts – all free of charge for the benefit or clients and the markets.

NatWest claims the mantle for being the first UK – and one of the first major banks internationally – to have sector level emissions reductions targets validated as science based by the SBTi.

The submission states: “NatWest has also shown leadership through deep dive sectoral ESG reports, such as our NatWest Agriculture Report – alongside the National Farmers’ Union – which considers reflecting how the transition to a more secure and sustainable agricultural sector is both possible and workable, as well as supporting the Sustainable Reporting Standard for Social Housing published in July.

“In February 2023, we published the initial iteration of our Climate Transition Plan which introduced our systems thinking approach. This approach considers how carbon flows between sectors of the economy, opportunities within one sector may be dependent on another sector within a system.

“By considering the interdependencies between these 5 systems – mobility, energy, property, food and financial – we aim to unlock decarbonisation solutions at scale.”

NatWest is an active voice and contributing member on key ESG industry bodies, including ICMA, LMA, AFME, GFMA, UKSIF, FMSB and the LSE. This allows us to help shape market guidance, and drive robust ESG financing standards for all users of ESG financing to generate real impact

The submission concludes: “To further embed ESG within our way of working, we launched ESG Explorer, granting ESG Insight to colleagues. The new tools provide access to a deep pool of ESG insight to a wide range of colleagues, helping them to better serve customers.”