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BNP PARIBAS: Support sustainable investment from private investors

1. Organizational Governance

Context

BNP Paribas Wealth Management has €377bn in Assets under Management as of June 2020 and 7,000 professionals in 3 hubs (Europe, Asia, USA). BNP Paribas Wealth Management ranks 1st in the Eurozone. For 150 years, BNP Paribas Wealth Management has been committed to protect wealth. Their goal is to create a new wealth management experience fit for a world of digital interactions and sustainability.

The bank considers it their responsibility to create investments with an impact, and also to assure that they are continuously contributing to the growth of responsible investment. Since there was an increase of nearly 70% of the entrepreneurs that preferred ‘responsible’ investments as compared to 10 years ago, BNP took on the responsibility to guide these clients towards responsible investments that would benefit the society.

Objectives

  • Target private investors and give them personalized help

  • Boost philanthropy

  • Support financially sustainable projects

  • Make investments useful for society

APPROACH

BNP Wealth management operates the portfolio management of great wealth holders who want to invest in sustainable finance and have an environmental or social impact.

Often clients who want to invest in responsible finance are not sure what impact they want to have, so the first topic for BNP Wealth management is to define this impact with them.

  • Step 1: Creation of the questionnaire my impact to help clients determine their impact profile; the exclusions they wish to bring into their portfolio.
  • Step 2: BNP needs to identify and develop the financial and patrimonial solutions that correspond to the investor’s convictions.
  • Step 3: Then the discussion between the investor and the private banker can start. The adviser proposes a personalized active management that adapts to market changes, helps the investor achieve its objectives and matches its return expectations and risk tolerance.

There are several sustainable investments that can be proposed to the investor:  green funds, ESG bonds and shares, edge funds, private equity. BNP needs to rate the positive impact regarding ESG (Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance) criteria. BNP advisors put a grade for the company and the bonds and shares related to this company.

Several resources are necessary:

Human resources: BNP needs to create a specific department - a team of experts for sustainable investment. These experts should be well-versed with the possible constraints, specific requirements and risks with the private investors.

Material resources: Strategic-A tool that would help in a thorough risk-return diagnostic of wealth allocation. It investigates and models potential scenarios to optimise portfolio allocation in order to better reflect your investor profile and your specific needs.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

  • Market shares in sustainable finance (France) = 8,9 %

  • BNP received a score of A in MSCI ESG Ratings (Sept 2019)

  • Euromoney 2019: BNP = World's Best Bank for CSR

  • ESG Asset Management Company of the Year in Asia (2018 & 2019)

  • #1 worldwide in the green bonds markets with € 4.4bn (June 2020)

  • #1 in EMEA on the market for Sustainability Linked Loans

Benefits

  • € 15,9bn of financing for renewable energies

  • Reduction of the environmental impact of greenhouse gas for the company (buildings + professional travels) by 5 %
Workforce
198 816 salariés (2020)
Turnover
44,6 milliards € (2020)
Country
France

Mise à jour le 02/11/2020

Creative Commons Attribution This work by Réseau Alliances – World Forum Lille is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.