Awards for Excellence 2019
|
|
Latin America’s best bank for sustainable finance this year is BBVA.
At the beginning of last year the bank pledged to mobilize €100 billion in green finance, sustainable infrastructure, social entrepreneurship and financial inclusion through to 2025, and Latin America is already becoming a large recipient of those efforts.
In September, under Gonzalo Mañón, head of credit in México, BBVA led subsidiary Bancomer’s green bond deal – the first such bond in Mexico that finances energy efficient projects, sustainable transport, water and waste management, and renewable energy.
A month later the bank placed the sustainable agriculture green bond of Fondo Especial para Financiamientos Agropecuarios.
|
|
|
Gonzalo Mañón |
The bank has also been active in the growing green loans market in the region, which started in earnest last year. BBVA led the financing, acting as sustainable agent and coordinator for the first sustainability-linked project in Peru for Ferreycorp Group linked to the company’s performance on environmental, social and governance criteria.
In project finance, the bank is also committed to helping companies to lower their carbon emissions. Most recently it was mandated by Engie on its green and sustainable financing for an 800 megawatt portfolio of two wind and four solar plants in Mexico.
BBVA Global Transaction Banking also made its debut at the end of 2018 in sustainability with the framework and certification to judge its clients’ transaction banking operations as green, social or sustainable. The first green buyer credit was issued to Colombian company Hidralpor.
BBVA is also active across the region in microfinance and inclusive finance – about seven million of its 8.4 million individuals that are supported by the bank’s microfinance foundation are in Latin America. Around 34% of those it reaches leave the threshold of poverty within three years.
In Mexico, where BBVA’s microfinance foundation is not active, the bank offers microcredit to low-income clients.
