*** Sanne van Keulen – Natuur & Milieu, Project Lead Financial Sector (this interview is in Dutch) ***

“Waar het op de korte termijn om gaat is een omslag in het denken en handelen op drie punten: (1) Van sec financiële materialiteit naar dubbele materialiteit, (2) Van risico’s voorkomen en brandjes blussen naar handelen vanuit een maatschappelijke visie en (3) Het meer strategisch aanwenden van je invloed.” (shortened quote from the interview)

*** Richard Kooloos – ABN AMRO, Director Group Sustainability (this interview is in English) ***

On Frank Elderson’s (ECB) statement that ‘without the financial services industry, we’re not going to make it’, Richard responded: “I agree with that, but it’s also the other way around. We can’t do it on our own. That’s the pitfall that we see sometimes see with politicians or civil rights organizations: if only we could just push the banks or the other financing institutions, then we solve the problem. That’s also not true. So he’s completely correct, you can’t do it without the financial industry, but you can’t solve it only through the financial services industry either. So we really have to do this together with companies in the real economy, together with politicians, together with civil society and together with regulators.”

*** Léon Wijnands – ING, Head of Sustainability NL (this interview is in English) ***

“I’m optimistic by nature, but it would be a little naive to think that we are ahead of track. The reports that just came out before COP27 were alarming and rightfully so. So there are two ways you can look at it. We already achieved a bit more compared to pre-Paris agreement times, but not enough to stay within the 1.5 degrees that we all think is necessary to have a future for the people on this planet. The transition towards a futureproof planet for all people requires a lot of trade-offs. A transition should be affordable for businesses, for consumers, that is more the economic side, but the social perspective is that we should be able to take everyone along.”

*** Piet Klop – PGGM, Head of the responsible investment unit (this interview is in English ***

“A big challenge we still have is better understanding of these ‘not yet financial risks’. Climate change, workforce scarcity, biodiversity loss, social inequality, you name it. All these things that have been out there in the world that sooner or later, and in some cases sooner, will have a material impact on our portfolio. So it’s just good long-term risk management in a way, accept that they’re risks that we still don’t quite fully understand. A consequence of that is that we need to be much better at developing scenarios that we can trust to construct our portfolios around and those scenarios require a whole lot more than just looking in the rear-view mirror. The next twenty years are going to be dramatically different from the past twenty years. So that’s one. Outside in risk.”

*** Etiënne Courbois en Simon Hardonk – CMS, beiden advocaat (this interview is in Dutch) ***

“Mede als gevolg van de veranderende opvattingen in de samenleving en wet- en regelgeving om klimaatdoelen te behalen, is het risico voor ondernemingen als zij niet verduurzamen steeds lastiger toegang tot financiering krijgen. Hoe een bedrijf omgaat met duurzaamheid wordt dus steeds belangrijker en als je nu niks doet, wordt het risicoprofiel van de onderneming hoger. Stil zitten is dan ook niet langer een optie om toegang tot financiering te behouden.”

*** Jaap Gerkes – Protiviti, Managing Director (this interview is in English) ***

“What I like about Sustainable Finance as a theme personally is the increasing interest in ESG-related topics and I like to add it’s not only the E, but the S and the G are equally important. That can help in achieving a better world and large corporations can play a big role and should play a big role. What you see is that companies see it as strategic efforts, i.e. with or without regulation, just something that they feel is important for themselves to to all stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, et cetera.”