While many global banks spent 2025 recalibrating their climate commitments, Crédit Agricole did the opposite. It reaffirmed its net-zero pathway and pushed ESG further into the way the group is run, from governance through to product. That consistency – matched with market leadership in sustainable finance and an agenda now reaching into climate adaptation and nature – underpins its win as Europe’s best bank for ESG.
The direction is set by the group’s ACT 2028 strategic plan, which embeds ESG across all business lines and backs it with a dedicated sustainability and impact division, and a network of more than 500 specialists. “We reaffirmed our net-zero pathway in our 2028 strategy, despite the challenging context,” says Quentin Guerineau, chief sustainability and impact officer. “That’s a strong commitment from us.”
Nowhere is the bank’s European weight clearer than in the arrival of the EU Green Bond Standard. Crédit Agricole helped draft the standard for the European Commission and, in its first year, structured 10 of the first 18 European Green Bonds brought to market, spanning corporates, financial institutions and public-sector issuers. These included the first corporate European Green Bond, for the Italian utility A2A, and the first from a public-sector issuer, Île-de-France Mobilités. “We were one of the banks drafting this standard six years ago,” says Tanguy Claquin, head of sustainability at Crédit Agricole CIB. “We believe in this product and so we are happy to see it taking off.”
Stewardship is at the heart of how we serve our clients’ long-term interests
Elodie Laugel
The agenda now runs beyond mitigation. The bank has launched pilot projects assessing climate risk in Alpine tourism, is modelling water stress and coastal retreat in France, and is financing home renovations designed to improve resilience to heatwaves in southern Europe. On nature, the group signed a 2025 pledge not to finance deep-sea mining projects, part of a broader move into ocean finance.
The strategy shows up on the balance sheet: financing to renewable and low-carbon energy reached €27.9 billion by mid-2025, more than double its end-2020 level.
The group’s extra-financial ratings also support the direction of travel. Crédit Agricole holds an A score from CDP, two notches above the sector average, a Leader AA rating from MSCI, a low-risk score of 17.7 from Sustainalytics and a Prime C+ from ISS ESG, the top rating it assigns in its commercial banks and capital markets sector.
The Amundi anchor
Crédit Agricole’s ESG proposition is reinforced by Amundi, one of Europe’s largest asset managers and the group’s engine for responsible investment. Amundi held €1,048 billion in responsible assets under management at the end of 2025 and ranks first in Europe for assets in European-labelled funds. Stewardship sits at the centre of the model: in 2025, it engaged nearly 3,000 companies worldwide on sustainability, more than 1,700 of them on climate.
“Stewardship is at the heart of how we serve our clients’ long-term interests,” says Elodie Laugel, chief responsible investment officer. “It reflects our strong belief that ambitious, structured and pragmatic active dialogue with our investee companies is an effective lever to accompany the expected transition.”
The mix of consistency, innovation and follow-through is what sets Crédit Agricole apart. As sentiment wavered elsewhere, the bank held its course – and kept moving into the harder, less-developed corners of sustainable banking.
