Focus on GFEC signatory: CISI

Green Finance Institute / Sustainable Finance Education Charter / Focus on GFEC signatory: Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI)

The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI) is the leading professional body for securities, investment, wealth and financial planning professionals. Formed in 1992 by London Stock Exchange practitioners, the CISI’s now-global presence ensures our members and partners worldwide enjoy access to the extensive benefits of the wider CISI community, including globally portable qualifications and country-specific regulatory programmes. Our head office in London is supported by offices in China, India, Ireland, Kenya, the Philippines, Spain, Sri Lanka and the UAE.

Who are the CISI’s members?

Our members work in wealth management, investment banking and financial planning, meaning they advise clients, individual, family and institutional, on a wide range of investment issues. We have a community of some 45,000 members in over 100 countries and in a normal year more than 40,000 CISI exams are sat in over 80 countries, around 14,000 taken outside the UK. Our corporate supporters include most of the world’s major financial institutions, and those firms and our members have been at the forefront in recent years of the growth of responsibility in finance, embracing ethical, ESG, faith-based, green, impact, and sustainable investment.

Integrity is at the core of everything we and our members do. We believe that integrity is a key component of professionalism, defined as the effective combination of knowledge, skills and behaviour, and this shines through in our members’ engagement with green and sustainable finance.

How does green finance affect them?

Strong demand in both retail and wholesale markets for green and sustainable investments has brought renewed focus on three themes – risk, reward, and reporting. CISI members’ focus is particularly on the first two – ensuring that clients are properly advised on the risks and returns available from the huge range of available investments, ‘green’ and otherwise, and particularly in recent years on the potentially enhanced returns available from supporting the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon world.

In particular, the call from UN Special Envoy for Climate Finance, Dr Mark Carney, in November 2020 for every professional financial decision to take climate change into account has spurred action in this year of COP26 to bring greater professionalism to the ‘green and sustainable rebuild’ of economies that many seek, clients in particular, and to which many governments are committed.

What is the Institute doing to support its members?
The CISI has a continuing programme to embed relevant green and sustainable issues in its wide range of exams, covering capital markets and corporate finance, compliance and risk, financial planning, investment operations, Islamic finance, and wealth management. In addition, we have an extensive continuing professional development programme with weekly updates in this field across a range of globally-accessible channels – our own CISI TV programmes, live and on demand, our magazine, the CISI Review, and a unique range of elearning modules, Professional Refreshers, now covering more than 150 themes, helping keep members at all stages in their careers up-to-speed with current professional thinking and trends.

Green Finance Education Resources Available

Responsible Finance

Find out more about our support for the Green Finance Education Charter:

www.cisi.org/cisiweb2/responsiblefinance

Launching a CISI membership survey in this field in January 2021, Simon Culhane, Chartered FCSI, CISI CEO, commented:
Climate-related risks and the deterioration of the world’s natural capital assets are the most significant issues of our time. Support across firms for ESG and ethical finance is therefore critical for the future sustainability and stewardship of our world.

Launching the Charter in June 2020, Simon said:

We are extremely pleased to be supporting the Charter initiative, an important step in acknowledging our profession’s commitment to education across the broad field of responsibility and sustainability, including green finance. This supports our members worldwide in bringing the drive, energy, integrity and skills needed to deliver the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and to establish a low-carbon world. The Charter aligns with the momentum already underway in our learning and qualifications programmes to ensure our members and future candidates can help build a planet fit for our children’s children to thrive in – and pass on.