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Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)

22 July 2016 – The Banking Environment Initiative (BEI), the banking leadership group that CISL convenes, was invited by the global banking industry’s transaction banking association, BAFT, to lead discussions on sustainable trade finance at its Indonesia Trade Finance Workshop in Jakarta today.

At the Indonesia Trade Finance Workshop today, two members of the Banking Environment Initiative’s Sustainable Trade Finance Council, Sam Mathew (Head of Documentary Trade Products, Standard Chartered Bank) and Jayant Parande (Group Treasurer, Olam) discussed why banks are starting to engage with environmental and social components of development in their trade finance activities and the role that banks can play in incentivising the trade of sustainably produced commodities.

The BEI’s Sustainable Trade Finance Council has been working on these issues since it formed in early 2015 and has identified a number of opportunities for banks to support the shift to sustainably produced commodities, ranging from strategic capacity building on the technical solutions available to banks, to supporting leadership in key export and import markets, to amplifying the demand signal already set by some corporates.

For further information, including a discussion paper 'Incentivising the trade of sustainably produced commodities', see here.