Patrick Hamilton on why the sustainable finance community is gathering momentum in Geneva November 18, 2021
Article published in finance.swiss on November 4
Geneva is the city where both the Red Cross was founded and the U.N. Human Rights Council is headquartered. It's also a city with a long, storied tradition in banking. Will the combination of humanism and finance define the future of the banking industry moving forward? Finance.swiss reporter Tanya König speaks to Patrick Hamilton, the president of Swiss Sustainable Finance and Building Bridges, an initiative aimed at making finance more sustainable, to find out if Geneva can benefit from the best of both worlds. The banking sector is undergoing the biggest transformation in history. How can financial institutions adjust their business model so they're not seen as part of the problem but instead as good, responsible corporate citizens? I think we should remind ourselves that the role of banks is twofold mainly: One, to insure the irrigation of the economy at all times; and two, to protect savings, make it grow, transfer it, etcetera. When you look at the huge transformation that is taking place today throughout the world, it concerns every sector, and in this respect capital can help a lot as can many other factors. If you take consumption, behavior would help the transition. If you take technology, technology would help with new solutions. If you take regulation, regulation is what puts a frame around the activities. And capital will encourage the right directions to be taken by industries. And in this sense, banking is, in this situation, even more a part of the solution than it has ever been.