A Note from Dr. Marcos Eguiguren, GABV executive director

As we are entering the third quarter of 2017, I am happy to see all the successes we achieved in the previous quarter. Building on the momentum of the GABV annual meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal, we welcomed three new member banks who joined the GABV in the last quarter:

Caisse d’economie solidaire Desjardins, our first member in French speaking Quebec (Canada),

Missoula Federal Credit Union, our first member in Montana (USA), and

Verity Credit Union, our first member in Washington State (USA).

With the new members, the Global Alliance comprises of 43 members and seven partners from around the world, and continues its work and a shared mission to use finance to deliver sustainable economic, social and environmental development.

With each new member joining our movement, we are getting a unique perspective and expertise on how to use finance to create positive economic, social and environmental impact for the individuals, organisations and communities we serve. We continue to be role models for change by educating and influencing other financial institutions to adopt the “Triple-Bottom-Line” approach and to help clients and consumers make good choices.

The second quarter of 2017 has been very active in Advocacy efforts with the GABV participating in a series of relevant events in different countries and hosted or co-hosted by different organizations.

Amongst those events, I would like to highlight The New Pathways for Sustainable Finance meeting on 27 and 28 June in Brussels. The meeting, attended by a few European GABV members, marked the start of an initiative designed to harness the power of finance to help deliver a just transition to a low carbon economy. Hosted by the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, Finance Watch and Mission 2020 (Christiana Figueres, who also participated in the meeting), New Pathways for Sustainable Finance is a participatory, multi-disciplinary initiative which aims to create and implement practical building blocks with the potential to make large-scale, lasting impact.

We were also very busy implementing many other activities during the second quarter of the year. These include virtual meetings with different communities of practices, bilateral exchanges amongst members, contacts with the media, supporting partners, and other stakeholders, etc. Some of the activities are summarised in this quarter’s eZine and on our website.

Every day, we show examples of how business can be done in a different way that has no impact on the environment and actually supports the development of communities worldwide. I am happy to see that all our members are persisting in doing business this way. I am especially happy to see the excitement to be a part of this inspirational network of banking experts and partners who are delivering on a mission that puts banking back in service of people, the economy and the environment. Only by working together we can influence a change we want to see.

Let’s continue banking for a better world!