Our ambition is to be a leading bank in the UK and Ireland helping to address climate change by setting ourselves the challenge to at least halve the climate impact of our financing activity by 2030, to reach net zero by 2050, and making our own operations Climate Positive by 2025. In 2019, we announced our target for £20 billion funding and financing for climate and sustainable finance between 2020 and 2022 which we brought forward from 2022 to 2021. In H1 2021, NatWest exceeded its 2020-2021 target of providing £20 billion of climate and sustainable funding and financing six months early with the delivery of £21.5 billion.
Today, NatWest Group is announcing a new target to provide £100 billion of Climate and Sustainable Funding and Financing (CSFF) by the end of 2025 (from 1 July 2021). Part of this new CSFF target will also help to support the investment needed to transition the UK to a net zero economy and will help to support the bank's customers including SMEs on their transition to a net zero and a more sustainable economy[1].
Today we are also publishing our new CSFI Criteria that we will use to determine the assets, activities and companies that are eligible to be counted towards the £100 billion CSFF from 1st January 2022. The new CSFI Criteria (Version 1.3) is available on our “Climate and sustainable finance” website .
The main changes and expansions to the previous CSFI Criteria which determined the assets, activities and companies that were eligible to be counted towards our £20bn CSFF target are and which we use to determine the assets, activities and companies that were eligible to be counted towards our £100bn CSFF target until 31 December 2021 are:
- Revisions to the Built Environment category to align to the Bank's Green, Social and Sustainability Bond Framework and reflect the launch of green purchase and re-mortgage products.
- Removal of 'Nuclear' and 'Energy from Waste' in the Low Carbon and Offsetting technology category to align to the Green Gilt Framework.
- Inclusion of sustainability bonds, as well as sustainable linked bonds and loans.
- To supplement the existing general lending category, which allows any general-purpose lending or wider financing to customers who can evidence (to NatWest Group's satisfaction through review of the issuer's or borrower's most recently published external results) that 50% or more of their revenues are from the categories and sectors outlined in the CSFI Criteria the following additional categories / specifications have been added
– in case of Utilities or Real Estate customers in case 75% or more of their assets are in the categories and sectors outline in the CSFI Criteria; and
– in case of a fund client – if 75% of Assets under Management are invested in activities outlined in the CSFI Criteria, at the time of reporting.