Cardano, our approach to Sustainability

ESG targets, green obligations, contributing to the UN's climate goals. These are all important themes in the financial sector. The foundation for Cardano Development was laid way back in 2005, long before “going green” became fashionable. Since then, this impact investor has grown into the largest collaboration platform for development banks in the world.

A Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) study sponsored by NOW: Pensions has revealed that women aged 25 will accumulate a workplace pension that is 20% less than men by the age of 65. What's the reason for this gap and where there could be opportunity for policy interventions to narrow it?

Until the establishment of The Currency Exchange Fund (TCX) in 2007, development banks provided loans to companies in developing countries in hard currency, such as dollars. An example of wrong way risk because local entrepreneurs do business in weaker currencies. The TCX fund, founded by Cardano and Cardano Development, insures this currency risk.

Green bonds are hugely popular today, but how did they come into being? Christopher Flensborg, widely known as the 'father of green bonds', unravels the entire story: "At one point people started saying, ‘wow, there something's going on here. We need to get into this.’" Resulting today in a green bond market representing some 700 billion euro in assets.

Biodiversity is important – not just for ecosystems, but for organisations, too. Sasha Scott says 'A heterogeneous workforce with cognitive diversity boosts creativity and innovation. An inclusive corporate culture is crucially important in translating these benefits into better results.'

Lincoln Pensions have been working with Luca Taschini, a researcher in Carbon Finance from the University of Edinburgh, on a framework to help translate climate risk to financial risk. In this video Luca discusses physical and transitional risks and the financial instability from the physical and transitional exposures.

Despite the prominence of derivatives across UK pension scheme portfolios, the assessment of ESG factors in derivatives remains relatively nascent. The question of how trustees – and investors more broadly – should approach ESG in derivatives remains relatively poorly treated. This is surely a serious omission, given that pension funds are significant users of derivatives.

Global climate change and the corona crisis. Two phenomena that have a huge impact on the economy and create a lot of uncertainty. What are the effects for the pension industry? How do you prepare for different scenarios that may arise? In this webinar, Dana Day and Michael Bushnell will address these questions and offer tools and instruments to get started.

Managing Director Michael Bushnell explains that within the Cardano Group the role of Lincoln Pensions is to look for the potential issues that might arise in a sponsor company, so that the pension fund trustee is prepared for them. “Climate change and ESG factors give trustees a chance to positively influence the employer covenant in a way that is not generally possible.”