The Soft Skills of Saving the World: Training Bankers to Accelerate Climate Action
It’s been suggested the Fellowship is like a superhero training camp for bankers who want to help save the world.
Naturally, there’s a few things up for debate with the analogy - not least among them the concept of the white saviour complex - but let’s run with it for now, and we genuinely welcome the debate after.
We open the scene with Earth unravelling into disaster from the multiple decades that humans have spent taking it for granted, squeezing it for everything it's worth, and knocking it out of the balance necessary to maintain life itself. The attempts to save it thus far have been valiant, but ultimately not enough. It’s gonna take a miracle to get out of this mess.
But wait, what’s this? Is there something stirring within the financial institutions? The same financial institutions that have over and over again been given the title of supervillain in the climate crisis? The ones that we are told are self-interested institutions that steal money from the poor and abandon their communities in the face of disaster? Yes, the very same. Because harbouring inside these impermeable institutions, there seems to be just enough people who want to take advantage of the realisation: with great power and lots of money comes great responsibility.
In the beginning, our fearless bank warriors are faced with a few struggles:
Fighting an uphill battle: Many people in banks operate under the assumption that the main goal of a bank is to make money, not protect the environment.
Rewards for the status quo: Because the main goal is to make money, bankers often get rewarded for doing things the way they’ve always been done, even if that means it’s bad for people or the planet.
Doing it alone: Financial institutions have been set up to work as fast as possible. Teams and people in different departments, let alone different institutions, don’t have easy ways to work together. This makes trying new things feel lonely and impossible.
Busy schedules: Even if all the above barriers could be overcome, it’s hard to find the time to focus on climate change when there’s barely enough time to do a day job as it is.
What now?
A flash of inspiration hits. The answer isn’t in finding more data or running more models. In fact, maybe it’s the soft skills that are the hardest part. They sign up for the Fellowship. (Cue intensely dramatic music.)
Our fellows focus on three things:
Being: Fellows learn to reflect on the beliefs and assumptions used to make decisions, the privileges that allow decisions to be made, and the self-care necessary to maintain the energy to take action.
Relating: The program teaches Fellows how to talk to people who might not agree with them at first about climate change. They also learn how to build strong relationships with other bankers who want to take action.
Doing: The program helps fellows make real changes within their banks, one step at a time in a process called “action learning.” You act, you learn from the action, you act again.
The story has a different ending for each individual, appropriate to their context and circumstances. But, to give you a taste, some of our “superhero” Fellows have successfully:
closed deals on climate tech, with more in the pipeline
influenced the regional adoption of a climate risk management framework they created
crafted a new sustainability-focused role that is better able to influence and accelerate their bank’s climate transition
influenced top leaders of their bank (with the majority of its lending in high carbon sectors), resulting in buy-in to embed climate into core strategy
integrated diversity, equity and inclusion concerns into climate risk under the umbrella of “emerging thematic risk”
Want to learn more about how the story might end for you?
Check out our Fellowship page (www.climatesafelending.org/fellowship) and our Testimonials & Impact (www.climatesafelending.org/testimonials-impact)