The Fellowship

Return on investment for banks and financial institutions

Return on Investment for Participating Institutions

As the climate crisis becomes ever more present in our lives, banks and financial regulators across the globe are recognising that it presents significant risks to financial stability and growth, and also offers tremendous strategic opportunities for those institutions who capitalise on financing a just and credible transition to a low carbon economy.

Many financial institutions have committed to net zero targets, but achieving these is proving challenging. Fundamental changes in core strategy, operations and culture is required. No bank has undertaken this transformation before. The way forward remains complex and uncertain.

The Fellowship aims to close the gap between business as usual and the ambitious but urgent climate goals. We are seeking a diverse group of individuals who are championing climate action in their financial institution to join the Fellowship.

Through their participation in this three-month Fellowship programme, organisations will benefit from:

  • Effective leaders: The Fellowship will enhance the motivation, commitment and effectiveness of bank employees, equipping them with the knowledge, networks and leadership skills to accelerate their bank's progress toward net zero.

  • Institutional transformation: The programme focuses on more than the technical components of climate finance. Fellows will gain skills and insights to support their bank's organisational transformation, capability-building and culture change for the climate transition.

  • Best practice insights: Fellows will bring back intelligence on climate finance approaches that are gaining traction in peer institutions - as well as those which aren’t. This can shortcut innovation and de-risk their bank’s climare approach while opening up competitive advantage from becoming a market leader.

  • Stakeholder network: The Fellowship is a programme of the Climate Safe Lending Network. Banks will gain access to our collective network of influential bank stakeholders - including senior leaders and changemakers within banks, investment firms, NGOs, financial regulators, government, business and academia - who they can leverage and collaborate with to develop and deliver climate strategies.

Fellowship activities are designed to take place alongside Fellows’ day job, with an average time commitment of two days a month over three months. Fellows will be supported to apply their learning directly in their organisation.

We welcome up to three employees from your organisation to join our 2024 Fellowship.

To amplify the value of these benefits to any one institution, we recommend sponsoring up to three employees to participate in the Climate Safe Lending Fellowship from any function, including:

  • Sustainability / ESG - someone responsible for developing and implementing climate strategies within the bank.

  • Commercial business units - someone in a core business function or business unit which now needs to integrate a climate lens into its strategy and decision making e.g. corporate lending, project finance, credit risk, relationship/portfolio management.

  • Internal operations - someone in the back office who is responsible for ensuring a climate lens is integrated into business processes and culture e.g. transformation, change management, human resources or learning and development.

Organisations can benefit from a group discount of 10% for two or three places. Each applicant will be assessed individually before being granted a place on the programme.

The Fellowship is already making a difference to participating institutions.

In 2023, we were joined by three Fellows from M&T Bank, who shared with us in this blog, how valuable it was to learn and act together on climate issues. For Asa Guilamo, Head of Climate Strategy, it was important to be able to integrate climate-related goals and strategies throughout the bank:

"I wanted to do the Fellowship alongside colleagues because I work in ESG, and we need climate intrapreneurs outside of ESG - the best solutions will be ones we come up with together. When we meet after sessions to discuss what we learnt, I find it really interesting that we’ll all have picked up on different things"

For her M&T colleague, Jessica Cowperthwait, SVP, Strategic Initiatives Expert, it was useful to explore with colleagues how to break down new information and turn it into practical action:  

"I think those conversations, where we can relate the content to what we’re working on today, tomorrow, next month and so on, is another level which really adds value on top of the programme content. Climate-safe lending is such a big topic, so breaking it down together makes it more digestible and applicable in my daily role."

Ivan Frishberg, SVP and Chief Sustainability Officer at Amalgamated Bank, had this to say:

"Having one of our portfolio managers participate in the Fellowship last year has made a huge impact internally. One of my proudest moments was seeing her step up to lead the kick-off of one of our latest climate-related projects. She is now driving some of our climate risk work and building an internal team to take this forward."

To explore other testimonials and learn more about the impact the Fellowship is making on Fellows and their organisations, visit our Testimonials and Impact page.

Join these organisations to develop and support your internal climate champions as part of the Climate Safe Lending Fellowship.

Please direct all inquiries to fellowship@climatesafelending.org.