Can your business access better finance by showing its green credentials? Soon engaging in sustainability will be a necessity, not a choice, for businesses wanting to secure equity funding and loans according to speakers at Insider's Future of Finance breakfast. The event, held at Birmingham;'s ThinkTank and sponsored by Browne Jacobson, took the thoughts of bankers, equity funders, lawyers and sustainability experts on the rapidly growing sustainable finance sector. Here are some of their thoughts.
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00:00Hi, I'm Kurt Jacobs. I'm the editor of Midlands Business Insider and welcome to Birmingham's
00:14Think Tank. We've just had a fascinating discussion on the future of funding, how businesses can
00:21grow through sustainable finance. We'll be looking at some of the things that hold businesses
00:26back, but really what the potentials are for sustainable finance in taking them forward.
00:32Let's have a chat to some of our panellists. Aaron Baker, Investments at BGF. I think we
00:38are seeing with the emergence of ESG-focused funds who have capital to deploy, we are definitely
00:44seeing instances where businesses that are ahead in their ESG agenda are getting a premium on their
00:49valuations at present. That's a product of investors chasing for those sorts of assets,
00:55but also because there's capital that needs to be deployed. I think over time we will see an
00:59ESG agenda or not having the right ESG policies in place actually being a drag on value because
01:04it will become the norm. Hi, I'm Tarita Redmead from Brown Jacobson. Sustainable finance is key.
01:11You know, you've got investors and banks are saying that if you do not engage with this agenda,
01:16you're going to find it very hard to access mainstream financing in the next few years.
01:20And it's going to be key to the longevity of businesses going forwards.
01:26I'm Matt Gosling, Director of Sustainable Finance from HSBC. The biggest opportunity,
01:32I think, for small businesses looking at sustainable finance is to see it as an
01:36opportunity for growth and not see it as something separate from the main strategy of their business.
01:40The successful businesses will integrate sustainable finance or sustainability into
01:44their main operations and not see it as an additional part of their operation.
01:48Hi, I'm Amrit Chandan, CEO of Gage19 and Chairman of the ESG Special Interest Group.
01:53For companies which are looking at sustainable finance, I would highly recommend to consider
01:57the business model that they have and whether they can bake into their financial position
02:04the profit that they have alongside the social impact and the environmental impact that they
02:09can have. If you can get all three in lockstep, then you can have a potentially very sustainable
02:14business which qualifies really nicely for sustainable finance.