Responding to today’s Green Finance Strategy from the Government, Richard Andrews, Financial Services Partner at KPMG UK, said:
“We are pleased to see greater clarity on timelines and the direction of travel for key regulatory initiatives such as the UK Green Taxonomy, the Sustainability Disclosure Requirements, which includes transition plans and product labels, and alignment with international disclosure standards. The accompanying HM Treasury consultation on ESG Data and Ratings is an important step in further encouraging comparability and consistency, and thus enabling meaningful progress towards Net Zero.
“Looking ahead, for the UK financial sector to remain at the forefront of the green finance agenda globally, we need to ensure that there is a role for transition finance in the UK, that we can quantify financial exposure of nature loss, that our frameworks are integrated with international standards, and that we can help identify opportunities for nature positivity, in particular through the establishment of robust Nature Based Solutions markets in the UK. References to nature positive transition journeys and the Bank of England’s work on quantifying losses is encouraging. For the latter, the clear signal that the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) framework is expected to be incorporated into UK policy and legislation is critically important to making progress.”