What does it take to turn sustainability from a reporting requirement into a competitive advantage? And how can financial institutions lead, not just comply, in the journey toward a nature-positive economy?
Mattie Yeta, Chief Sustainability Officer for CGI in the UK and Australia, recently featured as a guest on IBS Intelligence’s podcast – IBSi Views. She discusses how financial institutions are increasingly recognising the impact of nature-related risks, such as biodiversity loss, flood exposure, and water stress on asset values and long-term resilience. As climate change intensifies, banks are under pressure to incorporate granular environmental data into their credit and investment decisions.
Mattie highlights the challenges institutions face in accessing and interpreting vast datasets, and how emerging technologies, like AI (Artificial Intelligence) combined with Earth observation, are providing solutions. She also touches on the regulatory landscape, noting how recent mandates from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) are accelerating sustainability integration across the sector.
Key themes discussed
As financial institutions navigate a future shaped by climate risk and nature-related dependencies, the conversation is shifting, from awareness to action. In this episode, Mattie Yeta unpacks how banks and investors are beginning to incorporate environmental intelligence into decision-making:
- The use of Earth observation data for scenario-based risk assessment
- How CGI is supporting banks with nature-related financial disclosures
- The growing role of ESG (Environmental Social Governance) and sustainability in investment due diligence
- Regulatory forces driving adoption across the financial sector
- Education and technology as enablers of sustainable finance
Podcast speakers:
- Mattie Yeta, Chief Sustainability Officer for CGI in the UK and Australia
- Robin Amlôt, Managing Editor, IBS Intelligence
- Transcript
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Robin Amlôt: I'm Robin Amlôt of IBS intelligence. You're listening to the IBS I views podcast with me today. Is Mattie Yetta, Chief Sustainability Officer at CGI. What are we talking about? We're talking about banks being under growing pressure to understand how nature related risks can impact asset values and long-term resilience. The problem is that many of them, many lenders, still lack the tools and the context to interpret the data that they might or indeed might not be getting in a meaningful fashion. What is it they haven't got and what do they need?
Mattie Yeta: Thank you very much for the opportunity. Robin, so I'm proud to say that that we have published the first task force for nature related disclosure report as CGI, and this report looks at and uses Earth observation data to monitor the resilience the health and different climate scenarios into the future. And so to answer your question, it's incredibly difficult for banks and organisations in the financial institution to understand the different scenarios, first of all, related to climate change in different pathways. So, what does 1.5 degrees mean? What does 1.8 degrees mean? What does 2.5 and 3.0 degrees mean in the context of the impact of their investments? Those could be investments that are more locally within their communities, or international investments. Now, as we know, banks and financial institutions are involved in work across many different sectors, from water industries to health all the way to technology organisations, estates and property insurance. Now all of those industries are needing to understand the impact of climate change on their portfolios. And banks need to understand that impact in order to support valuations, risks, investment opportunities and what wider and so the data surrounding different climate scenarios, in addition to Earth observation and satellite data to provide nature based assessments and valuations things like flood risks associated with drought or water stress and wider are all data sets that are incredibly difficult for banking and lenders and financial institutions to actually come across and handle because they are such big data sets.
Robin: This is also quite high-level decision making, because it's not the kind of risk that a bank would be used to quantifying
Mattie: Absolutely, absolutely, most banks at the moment and lenders are actually doing some pretty good risk assessments, I would say. And these assessments may be associated with the markets that specific industries are operating, and also things like, is there a port near a specific market, or what's happening within a specific communities? Now, they will do some investor led ESG assessment, because that is a requirement for them. But you're absolutely right. They will not be used to the much more granular, complicated, detailed assessments to support scenario-based decision making. And what if scenarios? You know, what happens if we move to a 3.0 degrees and then being able to apply fantastic technologies like AI with Earth observation to then make those predictions a lot more practical and feasible and a lot more understandable for the teams, the sustainability teams, that are working behind the investor led decision making, and also wider, wider decision making so No, they won't be used to that. And I've worked with quite a few banks and lenders over the past couple of months, and they're all intrigued by the level of granularity that we're able to identify and understand specific risks in today's language using technology.
Robin : Well, you say, in today's language, today's language is a simple one for banks. Does it make a profit? Will I get my money back? These are the questions that bankers ask if they're lending money. Will I get it back? What's the chance of it going south on me, if they're investing in something, will it make a profit? How do you get in between that mindset and get banks to take sustainability issues seriously as part of the bottom line? They may take it seriously, but it's not yet been incorporated into the bottom line.
Mattie: It is such a fantastic question, but I do agree with you that you do need a driving force to actually drive any organisation to really accelerate the rate of adoption and incorporation and integration of sustainability. Fortunately for us, the Financial Conduct Authority, together with the CMA, have launched quite a bit of legislation within the banking and financial institution sectors, and these legislation are now mandating and requiring for banks and financial institutions to do a lot more than they have ever done in the past. So I think with one lens, we've now got a driving force on the legislative front that is almost spurring and accelerating the need for banks and financial institutions to really integrate ESG and sustainability within their ways of working. On another hand, actually, I think most industries now are starting to think about this, but also their target audience, investors are heavily targeted at the moment. They have specific requirements that they have to complete and are needing to rely on on banks to actually have the provisions in place to support them with better investment decision making and at the very least evidencing to support other legislative requirements other institutions, energy organisations, water companies, they're all being driven in different ways, which is also in many ways, creating that push for this sector to actually accelerate. But you know, you're quite right. There are some instances and areas where we are seeing a slower adoption than we would like. I think topics like social value, for example, are slightly behind within the banking communities. The more environmental topics are and actually the more climate related and risk related topics are accelerating at a much faster pace.
Robin: So, we are actually seeing nature data being incorporated into credit and investment decisions.
Mattie: We are indeed, we are, indeed. We are starting to see it, but the level of granularity is where that difference is now in that I think there's firstly an educational piece to help the banking community understand what can be done with this data, and actually, how far can you take it, and what can technology do? I think there's that one lens to it, and actually just giving them some practical examples of where this has been deployed and how successful other organisations and institutions are actually using Earth observation data. So, I think whilst we are seeing that there's still some way to go to fully understand the extent that it can be incorporated, and what it can do to simplify things for the sector.
Robin: Mattie Yetta, Chief Sustainability Officer at CGI, thank you very much.
Mattie : Thank you for having me.
Robin: You've been listening to IBSi Views, and if you enjoy our content, why not visit www.ibsintelligence.com for more news and analysis of all things fintech.
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