Die ESG entwickelt sich zu einem Schlüsselelement des Bankkreditrisikos.

(WK-intern) – Im ersten Teil einer dreiteiligen Reihe befasst sich dieser Forschungsbericht mit den Umweltfaktoren, die Scope bei seinen Kreditbewertungen für Banken berücksichtigen wird.

• Scope hat seinen Ansatz zur Bewertung von Banken optimiert und die grundlegenden Kreditrisikofaktoren
• Betriebsumfeld, Geschäftsmodelle und Risiko regulatorischer Eingriffe
• durch einen expliziteren kombinierten kombinierten ESG- und Digitalfaktor ergänzt, mit der Ansicht, dass ein erfolgreiches Management eine Quelle für Kreditverbesserungen darstellt.

Assessing environmental factors as a component of bank credit risk

ESG is emerging as a key element of bank credit risk. In the first of a three-part series, this research report looks at the environmental factors Scope will start to consider in its bank credit assessments.

Scope has streamlined its approach to rating banks, complementing baseline credit risk factors – operating environment, business models and risk of regulatory intervention – with a more explicit combined ESG and Digital factor with the view that successfully managing this is a source of credit enhancement.

“Management teams and supervisory boards are facing increasing pressure to explain how they are maximising value for long-term investors, including their social value,” said Dierk Brandenburg, head of Scope’s financial institutions team. “As such, the shift towards ESG goals is debtholder friendly because it pushes back on the narrower and often shortsighted goal of shareholder-value maximisation.”

ESG-D is having a clear bearing on banks’ business models and long-term viability. And it has an increasingly visible influence on public and investor confidence in banks. “The long-term sustainability of banks will suffer if they are not considered responsible corporate citizens. They risk losing their social licence to operate from stakeholders well before breaching regulatory buffers. Banks most advanced on this front have not just identified the issues but have developed strategic responses and set KPIs that are explicitly linked to top-management compensation,” Brandenburg said.

Banks with poor reputations around ESG may find it increasingly difficult to develop their businesses. Reduced investor demand and more difficult access to central banks or public development funds could negatively affect liquidity and lead to higher funding costs.

Scope expects banks to adequately manage direct physical climate risks through underwriting criteria or insurance cover, and to reflect any rise in the frequency and correlation of climate-related credit losses in their risk capital models. Climate transition risks, by contrast, are less well understood.

In the face of stakeholder pressure, banks are keen to be seen as part of the solution for energy transition. The Principles for Responsible Banking and the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures have emerged as key planks for banks’ policies regarding net-zero emissions and other ESG targets and will lead to a shift in bank asset portfolios and revenue streams over time.

“The challenge here is that without knowing the starting point, it is difficult to assess the relevance of a bank’s long-term carbon-reduction goals and the subsequent impact of physical and climate transition risk on asset quality and capitalisation within our much shorter rating horizon,” Brandenburg cautioned.

About Scope Ratings GmbH
Scope Ratings GmbH is part of the Scope Group with headquarters in Berlin and offices in Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan, Oslo and Paris. As the leading European credit rating agency, the company specialises in the analysis and ratings of financial institutions, corporates, structured finance, project finance and public finance. Scope Ratings offers a credit risk analysis that is opinion-driven, forward-looking and non-mechanistic, an approach which adds to a greater diversity of opinions for institutional investors. Scope Ratings is a credit rating agency registered in accordance with the EU rating regulation and operating in the European Union with ECAI status.

PR: Scope SE & Co. KGaA