ANSA Mer­chant Bank in T&T and Bar­ba­dos, and ANSA Bank have part­nered with The Crop­per Foun­da­tion and the Cap­i­tals Coali­tion to launch the Caribbean Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Hub.

The ini­tia­tive places greater em­pha­sis on re­new­able en­er­gy projects and the bet­ter use of nat­ur­al re­sources through spe­cialised fund­ing for such pro­grammes.

Speak­ing at the launch at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel yes­ter­day, chair­man, ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd A Nor­man Sab­ga said as a group it has al­ways been con­scious of its du­ty to op­er­ate busi­ness­es re­spon­si­bly in the in­ter­est of em­ploy­ees, in­vestors, cus­tomers and the broad­er so­ci­ety.

“For us, sus­tain­abil­i­ty is not just about de­liv­er­ing prof­its and growth. It is about cre­at­ing a pos­i­tive im­pact so that our stake­hold­ers are bet­ter off be­cause we ex­ist... The sheer size, na­ture and di­ver­si­ty of our busi­ness­es give the group the unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly to build­ing a brighter fu­ture for a wide cross-sec­tion of so­ci­ety,” Sab­ga said.

As a provider of fund­ing, Sab­ga said the com­pa­ny pro­pos­es to in­flu­ence more sus­tain­able de­ci­sion-mak­ing by cus­tomers.

“We have al­ready be­gun of­fer­ing cus­tomers in Bar­ba­dos ex­clu­sive deals on the pur­chase of elec­tric ve­hi­cles. We are al­so pre­pared to pro­vide growth in­cen­tives for busi­ness­es whose ac­tiv­i­ties are geared to­wards re­duc­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact,” Sab­ga ex­plained.

For ex­am­ple, he said ANSA Mer­chant Bank cur­rent­ly has a healthy fi­nanc­ing pipeline for re­new­able en­er­gy projects which will cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties to pro­vide val­ue-added fi­nanc­ing terms.

Gre­go­ry Hill, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd and chair­man, ANSA Mer­chant Bank (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd not­ed that the part­ner­ship will have a last­ing im­pact on fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

“Our com­mit­ment goes to the heart of how we con­duct our bank­ing busi­ness. We think glob­al­ly, and act re­gion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly. It has tak­en a small team of us, over two years to reach this point, where I am con­fi­dent to stand be­fore you to­day and make such a com­mit­ment on be­half of our banks.

“Sim­ply put, we are em­bark­ing on a jour­ney where we will learn to em­bed the nat­ur­al cap­i­tal pro­to­cols in­to all our op­er­a­tions. We will then be able to iden­ti­fy, quan­ti­fy, and com­mu­ni­cate pub­licly, the ways in which our op­er­a­tions af­fect and are re­liant on na­ture’s as­sets,” Hill said.

He added that the goal is to use this as­sess­ment, to pi­o­neer the first, pri­vate sec­tor led, Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Re­port in the Caribbean which will ex­plain and doc­u­ment, the eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial val­ue of the im­pact on the cap­i­tal as­sets of the re­gion.

Hill ex­plained that as part of the hub, it will lead to sev­er­al ini­tia­tives such as grant chal­lenges for SMEs, start-ups and in­no­va­tors in T&T and Bar­ba­dos, spon­sor­ship of a cit­i­zen’s blog, and much more.

To en­sure the suc­cess of the hub, Hill said some ini­tia­tives in­clude of­fer­ing pref­er­en­tial bank­ing terms to bor­row­ing clients in sus­tain­able busi­ness­es; piv­ot its in­vest­ment of­fer­ings to widen the pool of prod­ucts to blue or green mu­tu­al fund in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for its in­vest­ing clients; en­hance its sus­tain­abil­i­ty en­gage­ment with Gen Z and mil­len­ni­al in­flu­encers, who be­lieve in im­por­tant “caus­es” and col­lab­o­rate open­ly with the next gen­er­a­tion of ANSA Bank­ing clients by of­fer­ing spe­cial in­cen­tives to projects and busi­ness­es that can demon­strate the need and their ac­tions.

Omar Mo­hammed, CEO of The Crop­per Foun­da­tion said the mea­sure is a shin­ing ex­am­ple of mul­ti-stake­hold­er part­ner­ship for sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

“The pri­vate sec­tor, and more specif­i­cal­ly the fi­nan­cial sec­tor, is pos­si­bly the sin­gle biggest cat­a­lyst for change glob­al­ly,” he added.