Burgeoning demand drives ANZ's sustainable finance team ramp-up
On 11 July, ANZ announced a swathe of new senior appointments to its global sustainable finance team. Katharine Tapley, head of sustainable finance at ANZ in Sydney, spoke to KangaNews about the makeup of the team, the relevance of key hires’ skill sets and how they align with the bank’s wider sustainable finance strategy.
ANZ appears to have made a substantial investment in a team that had already grown significantly in recent years. What does the growth and size of the team say about the significance ANZ expects sustainable finance to have in the coming years?
TAPLEY ANZ now has a head count of 31 in its global sustainable finance team, with 15 based in Australia, five in New Zealand and 11 people across the UK, US and Asia. We are evolving according to our customers’ preferences, and this expansion is a direct response to ongoing customer demand for sustainable finance insights and support. Expanding the team also reinforces the bank's broader ambition to become the leading Australian and New Zealand bank in supporting customers’ transition to net zero emissions by 2050.
The way the sustainable finance market is evolving is putting greater emphasis on the entity-level scrutiny rather than just instruments – including through very recent updates to the EU Green Bond Standard. Does this evolution play a part in resourcing ANZ’s sustainable financing team?
TAPLEY Absolutely. We’ve been cognisant for some time that the sustainable finance market has matured in its focus on the borrower as well as the transaction. We need to maintain a well-resourced team capable of carrying out borrower-leve; suitability analysis, which is already integral to our processes, and to ensure we are supporting our customers strongly as they come to market.
There is an international focus to the team expansion, with at least one new role in London as well as an expanded role in New York. What sort of business will offshore team members be doing?
TAPLEY These appointments show that the sustainable finance business is developing in line with ANZ’s broader institutional footprint.
We have been thinking deeply about the trajectory of the sustainable finance market globally including where we can best place our people to service our customers. Locating senior people in London and New York will enable us to better capture the transactional flow we are seeing there as well as deepening our local relationships with borrowers and investors to drive insights back into our home markets.
All in all, this contributes to building ANZ’s market presence as a full-service sustainable finance bank in the region.
ANZ global sustainable finance senior appointments
| Name | Role | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Cédric Chaudron | Executive Director, Sustainable Finance | Brisbane |
| Emily Tonkin | Head of Sustainable Finance, UK and Europe | London |
| David Simmons | Executive Director, Sustainable Finance | Sydney |
| Simon Reid | Director, Sustainable Finance | Melbourne |
| Amanda Helmore | Associate Director, Sustainable Finance | Melbourne |
| Sarah Ho | Director | New York |
Source: ANZ 19 July 2023
The pace at which sustainable finance has grown has led some to comment on the scarcity of qualified professionals to work in the field. Is this something ANZ had to confront, and if so how have you gone about finding high-quality, qualified individuals to add to the team?
TAPLEY It is well-documented that there is a scarcity of resources in the sustainability sector, and within sustainable finance the challenge is also apparent. It is crucial to attract and retain talent, and we have a keen focus on finding new people as well as repurposing talent internally. In building our team at ANZ, we have purposefully identified existing banker talent – whether they be coverage or product bankers – at the same time as building technical ESG capability, to diversify the skillset.
Thinking of our most recent announcement, Emily Tonkin, now in London, has a strong leveraged-finance and coverage background backing up her time in the sustainable finance team in Sydney. Sarah Ho has 10 years of coverage and corporate-finance experience in the New York market to bring to her new role in the team. Simon Reid has just joined our team in Melbourne from his role on the funding desk in ANZ group treasury.
It would be interesting to hear what a bank funding background brings to the table.
TAPLEY Simon has very strong relationships with ANZ’s own debt investors, many of whom are common to those we see across our external customer-facing transactions. He also deeply understands funding and capital needs, and has been involved in ANZ’s SDG [UN Sustainable Development Goals] bond programme from his role in our treasury team. Having someone on the team with this background only reinforces our ability to support our customers.
ANZ is not the only bank in Australia to have beefed up its sustainable finance team. But we have started to see different models emerge for how sustainable finance interacts with institutional banking and, in particular, capital markets. Can you provide a refresher on the ANZ model?
TAPLEY ANZ’s sustainable finance team sits within our corporate finance business, albeit we also function across our markets and transaction banking businesses in support of customers alongside our coverage bankers.
The other layer is that, for day-to-day functionality, we operate across geographic lines, enabling all our sustainable-finance team members’ insights into market trends as they emerge globally and are applied regionally. This drives our ability to provide our clients with robust insights into global and regional developments.
Speaking of regional developments, ANZ is also emphasising the value of having a sustainable finance banker on the ground in Queensland for the first time. What are the advantages and priorities here?
TAPLEY Cédric Chaudron has been appointed to a new Brisbane-based executive director role. The ANZ institutional bank already has a significant Queensland client base and we are seeing material sustainable finance borrower and investor opportunities in the state.
Our approach is in line with the adage “build it, and they will come.” We have seen that play out as we have built our presence in New Zealand and Asia over recent years. By basing our team across these additional locations, and building on the talent in home markets, we are excited about increasing interaction with our customers and driving more business activity as a result.
