Tiffanie Wong, CFA| Director—Fixed Income Responsible Investing Portfolio Management; Director—US Investment-Grade Credit

Patrick O'Connell, CFA| Director—Fixed Income Responsible Investing Research

Markus Peters| Director of Fixed Income Business Development and Strategy—Responsible Investing

While companies such as clean energy providers and electric vehicle manufacturers bask in the limelight, an entire sector driving the shift to a sustainable world goes largely unnoticed. Step forward the world’s banks, indispensable providers of capital and crucial agents of change.

Ask a typical investor about the leading companies in sustainable progress, and chances are you’ll hear a string of technology and consumer products names in reply. That’s only natural, as many of the stock markets’ standout performers feature in these sectors. But for fixed-income investors, the world’s banks should rank high on the priority list too.

Banks Are Central to Sustainable Development

Financial companies are large issuers in global debt markets and hence big constituents in fixed-income benchmarks. That makes them a key part of most fixed-income portfolios. Fixed-income investors have an array of bond instruments to choose from across a bank’s capital structure (unlike the relatively limited choice of bank equity for shareholders). Sustainable fixed-income investors can select from banks’ conventional bonds—via both senior and subordinated debt—and their green, social or sustainability (GSS) bonds.

Banks provide capital for specific green or social projects linked to sustainable objectives, and regularly opt to finance them using GSS bonds, with a whopping US$367 billion issued globally at the end of 2022, Bloomberg reports.

In most countries, it is typically banks—not capital markets—that are the main source of credit. This makes the banks central not only to the clean energy transition and to carbon-reducing initiatives, but also to wider positive social changes.

Banks’ Drive to Sustainability Is a Global Phenomenon

While European banks have led the way in sustainable financing initiatives and the issuance of GSS bonds, these examples show how sustainable lending best practices have spread across the banking world:

Empowering women. Canada’s Bank of Montreal (BMO) pioneered bonds that support female entrepreneurship, issuing in 2021 a Women-in-Business social bond aligned with: UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, “Gender Equality”; SDG 8, “Decent Work and Economic Growth”; and SDG 10, “Reduced Inequalities.” Proceeds are allocated to women-owned enterprises, including micro, small and medium-sized businesses, based on a stated aim of supporting an inclusive society with zero barriers and a thriving economy by doubling support for women-owned businesses in Canada.

Driving global development. Itaú, a major retail and commercial bank in Brazil, has been an early emerging-market adopter of GSS bonds. Its Sustainable Bond is flexible and funds renewable energy, micro enterprises and middle-sized enterprises in Brazil’s poorest regions. This bond is used as a template for a partnership between Itaú and the International Finance Corporation (a division of the World Bank) to channel additional socially focused funds into Brazil. The bond strongly aligns with SDG 8, “Decent Work and Economic Growth.”

Transitioning from bank lending to green bonds. There are many examples worldwide of renewable projects that are first financed by banks, then refinanced in the bond markets. For instance, since the late 1990s, Citibank supported CMI Energía (the largest renewable power generator across Central America) with bank loans in the initial stages of the company’s renewable journey. Renewable plants are relatively small, and individually their financing needs cannot justify a green bond issue. After issuing a series of loans to CMI Energía, in 2021 Citibank underwrote a US$700 million green bond deal in the capital markets. This allowed the bank to free up its balance sheet, enabling continued lending for sustainable purposes both to CMI Energía and to other businesses.

Sustainability Begins at Home

Environmentally aware banks are leading in decarbonizing both their own operations and their loan books, and in advising and financing their clients’ sustainable developments. Dutch banks have assumed a pioneering role in many respects.

For example, Netherlands lender Rabobank now has explicit criteria for providing green financing. The bank insists that buildings built before 2020 must “belong to the top 15% of national building stock based on primary energy demand” or, if built after 2020, must have an energy consumption score “at least 10% lower than the threshold set for the nearly zero-energy building (‘NZEB’) requirements in the local market.” Rabobank’s very direct and specific rules contrast with more nebulous use-of-proceeds requirements that we’re seeing in recent green bond issues from industrial companies.

Another Netherlands-based lender, ING, has comprehensive sustainable policies both for helping its clients and for its own loan book, backed by specific targets: a 50% increase in new financing commitments for renewable energy by year-end 2025 compared with 2021; 100% of its commercial real estate portfolio to have an A energy label by 2030; and the total loan book to reach net zero by 2050 or earlier.

As a further example, ABN AMRO has been a pioneer in reducing the cost of borrowing for its counterparties who borrow money for environmental purposes. The bank commits to transfer the “greenium” (that is, the cost savings from issuing green and other ESG-labeled bonds at advantageous yields) to the underlying borrowers, which reduces their overall project costs.

Much Accomplished, but Much Still to Be Done

To be sure, other financial services providers are also making major contributions to sustainable development. But global banks are central to the global economy and are systemically important stabilizers across both emerging and developed markets. And the banks have unrivalled reach: publicly owned commercial banks can support regional enterprises too small for capital markets, while multilateral development banks, operating without public equity, can provide low or no-cost loans to developing nations and/or for sustainable purposes. The recent marine conservation Galapagos Bond (“blue bond”), issued as a debt-for-nature debt restructuring swap by Ecuador and supported by a guarantee from the Inter-American Development Bank and political-risk insurance from the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, is a case in point.

While environmentally aware banks have set the pace in driving sustainable progress, much still needs to be done to spread best practices across the sector globally. Investors who seek a sustainable world must engage with banks’ management to encourage faster progress.

The views expressed herein do not constitute research, investment advice or trade recommendations and do not necessarily represent the views of all AB portfolio-management teams. Views are subject to change over time.

Learn more about AB’s approach to responsibility here

AllianceBernstein

AllianceBernstein

AllianceBernstein (AB) is a leading global investment management firm that offers diversified investment services to institutional investors, individuals, and private wealth clients in major world markets.

To be effective stewards of our clients’ assets, we strive to invest responsibly—assessing, engaging on and integrating material issues, including environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into most of our actively managed strategies (approximately 79% of AB’s actively managed assets under management as of December 31, 2024).

Our purpose—to pursue insight that unlocks opportunity—describes the ethos of our firm. Because we are an active investment manager, differentiated insights drive our ability to design innovative investment solutions and help our clients achieve their investment goals. We became a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2011. This began our journey to formalize our approach to identifying responsible ways to unlock opportunities for our clients through integrating material ESG factors throughout most of our actively managed equity and fixed-income client accounts, funds and strategies. Material ESG factors are important elements in forming insights and in presenting potential risks and opportunities that can affect the performance of the companies and issuers that we invest in and the portfolios that we build. AB also engages issuers when it believes the engagement is in the best financial interest of its clients.

Our values illustrate the behaviors and actions that create our strong culture and enable us to meet our clients' needs. Each value inspires us to be better: 

• Invest in One Another: At AB, there’s no “one size fits all” and no mold to break. We celebrate idiosyncrasy and make sure everyone’s voice is heard. We seek and include talented people with diverse skills, abilities and backgrounds, who expand our thinking. A mosaic of perspectives makes us stronger, helping us to nurture enduring relationships and build actionable solutions.
• Strive for Distinctive Knowledge: Intellectual curiosity is in our DNA. We embrace challenging problems and ask tough questions. We don’t settle for easy answers when we seek to understand the world around us—and that’s what makes us better investors and partners to our colleagues and clients. We are independent thinkers who go where the research and data take us. And knowing more isn’t the end of the journey, it’s the start of a deeper conversation.
• Speak with Courage and Conviction: Collegial debate yields conviction, so we challenge one another to think differently. Working together enables us to see all sides of an issue. We stand firmly behind our ideas, and we recognize that the world is dynamic. To keep pace with an ever changing world and industry, we constantly reassess our views and share them with intellectual honesty. Above all, we strive to seek and speak truth to our colleagues, clients and others as a trusted voice of reason.
• Act with Integrity—Always: Although our firm is comprised of multiple businesses, disciplines and individuals, we’re united by our commitment to be strong stewards for our people and our clients. Our fiduciary duty and an ethical mind-set are fundamental to the decisions we make. 

As of December 31, 2024, AB had $792B in assets under management, $555B of which were ESG-integrated. Additional information about AB may be found on our website, www.alliancebernstein.com.

Learn more about AB’s approach to responsibility here.

More from AllianceBernstein