Chairman of the Board of Directors, D. Sc. Economics, Vasily Vysokov, published a piece titled «Competitive Advantages of Sovereign ESG Banking» on the informational website Finversia.ru. The article analyzes how Russian banks might leverage their competitive edges to take climate change into consideration and take advantage of legal incentives for ESG-transformation.

The author of «Sovereign ESG Banking» piece defended the need to take into account national interests for the effective adoption of ESG principles in banks’ daily operations. In his recent publication, Professor Vysokov uses the guidelines and suggestions from the paper titled «Climate Risks in a Changing Economic Environment» as an example to emphasize the need of integrating new technologies and ESG-digitalization in order to advance national ESG-banking. «Sovereignty is global competitive performance.  Russian sovereign ESG banking framework should have the following competitive advantages: digitization, integration of financial and non-financial reporting, and sovereign technology taxonomy».

The author underlines the value of expanding non-financial reporting and integrating it with financial data. This will eventually lead to standardized methods for analyzing and taking into account ESG factors and their influence on climate risk. Additionally, the Bank of Russia will be able to establish a framework for the regulation of «green» and adaptational initiatives based on technological sovereignty and structural adaptation of the economy.