Taipei, 19 October: Taiwan Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD Taiwan) announced the launch of Taiwan Sustainable Finance platform (TSF), with the support from HSBC Bank (Taiwan, China) and Bank SinoPac. At the launching event earlier this year, BCSD Taiwan published the first Taiwan Sustainable Finance Survey.
Taiwan Sustainable Finance platform (TSF)
The time for SDGs and 1.5℃ goals are approaching, businesses are pressured to make sustainable transformation; the COVID-19 pandemic forces people to really pay attention to sustainability issues. All that has happened sounded the alarm; however, BCSD Taiwan Secretary-General, Tony Mo, said: ” the lack of appropriate talents and sustainability-related capacities within enterprises hinder the progress.” Chairman of SinoPac Holdings, Shi-Kuan Chen, also noted that sustainability policies and talent cultivation are first and foremost tasks to be addressed.
As WBCSD’s Global Network partner in Taiwan, China, BCSD Taiwan adopted the core concept of Redefining Value into the TSF, in expectation to see a systematic transformation in the capital market and general companies. Therefore, the TSF will work on ESG enterprise risk management and internal control, SASB and TCFD disclosure research, etc., to help accelerate the quality of non-financial reporting for informed decision-making, hoping to build up a sound sustainable finance eco-system.
The primary task for sustainable finance: talent cultivation
We also published the first sustainable finance survey in Taiwan, China, aiming to understand the current view of financial sector on sustainable finance. This survey investigated 51 financial enterprises in Taiwan, China. Some key findings as follows:
- 94.1% of the respondents believe that the scale of sustainable investment will grow;
- 48% of enterprises have formally incorporated sustainable finance into internal procedures;
- 49.5% of the respondents believe that they are ready for sustainable finance regulations;
- only 33.3% of the respondents believe that they have sufficient skills to apply ESG;
- 48.9% of the respondents have set specific goals for sustainable finance; and
- talent cultivation is considered the most important cornerstone for sustainable finance.
Looking at the results, most financial enterprises support and agree on the importance of sustainable finance but the progress varied. However, the outlook is bright. Chief Executive Officer of HSBC Taiwan, Adam Chen, said: “Sustainable finance is HSBC's global development goal. Taiwan market is making good progress on the issues and has great developing potential. All parties should be pooled to accelerate the development of sustainable finance in Taiwan.”
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