26/11/21

GUERNSEY: Island climbs global green finance index rankings.

As published on guernseypress.com, Friday 26 November, 2021.

Guernsey is moving up global green finance ratings – while Jersey falls behind.

The island has climbed into position 51 on the latest global green finance index put together by Z/Yen, which describes itself as the City of London’s leading commercial think-tank. That is three places up from the previous index.

Meanwhile, Jersey is down at position 60 after falling six places. The Isle of Man is further behind in spot 78 after dropping four positions.

London was named number one in the latest index, moving up two places and in turn replacing Amsterdam at the top, which fell to second. San Francisco, Zurich and Luxembourg made up the rest of the top five.

Barnaby Molloy, deputy chief executive at industry agency Guernsey Finance, said it was encouraged to see Guernsey’s move up global green finance index rankings – especially to see its change in ranking being one of the largest in the index.

‘Guernsey is a first mover and driver in many areas of sustainable finance, including establishing the world’s first regulated green fund regime, the Guernsey Green Fund, which now has more than £4bn in assets, and the creation of an ESG framework by the Guernsey International Insurance Association for its members,’ he said.

The Guernsey Green Finance team were also part of the conversation at the recent United Nations COP26 climate summit, which received global coverage, and produced world-class research, literature and thought leadership content.

‘We look forward to stepping up even more in the work we do to contribute to the race to net-zero and ensure that Guernsey continues to be seen as a good global citizen, and to see how that will reflect on our ranking in the future,’ he added.

Z/Yen said that the index rated 80 financial centres across the world, combining assessments of the depth and quality of green finance in those centres from financial professionals with quantitative data which formed instrumental factors.

The latest index used 4,847 financial centre assessments collected from 776 financial services professionals who responded to an online questionnaire.

Dr Andy Sloan, a leading light in sustainable finance locally, and the founder of The International Sustainability Institute Channel Islands, said: ‘This is a great reflection on the hard work of a lot of our finance community and a great testament to the foresight of the green finance strategy.’