Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) has amend­ed its or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture to in­clude a new Of­fice of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, RFHL ex­plained that this demon­strates its in­tent to in­te­grate sus­tain­abil­i­ty in­to its strate­gic and op­er­a­tional process­es.

Ac­cord­ing to RFHL, the Of­fice of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty will be re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ing and im­ple­ment­ing strate­gies that will steer the group’s op­er­a­tions to in­cor­po­rate ESG (en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance) con­cerns.

RFHL al­so cit­ed that ESG fac­tors are emerg­ing as glob­al bench­marks for or­gan­i­sa­tion­al ac­count­abil­i­ty, prof­itabil­i­ty, ef­fi­cien­cy and longevi­ty, adding that the unit’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties will in­clude de­vel­op­ing and main­stream­ing of an ESG strat­e­gy for RFHL, co-or­di­nat­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme Fi­nance Ini­tia­tive (UN­EP FI) and re­port­ing on the group’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty jour­ney lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Lead­ing this ef­fort is the Group Sus­tain­abil­i­ty of­fi­cer Tisha Mara­jh, RFHL said.

It al­so not­ed that Mara­jh brings a wealth of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence to the po­si­tion and has worked as a sus­tain­abil­i­ty/com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sion­al and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­sul­tant on a range of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al projects for over two decades.

She holds Mas­ter and Bach­e­lor De­grees from York and Car­leton Uni­ver­si­ties in Cana­da, spe­cial­is­ing in sus­tain­abil­i­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

RFHL said this ap­point­ment puts ac­tion to the group’s 2020 com­mit­ment to align with the Paris Agree­ment, the UN­EP FI and the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs).

“As the on­ly Caribbean domi­ciled fi­nan­cial sig­na­to­ry to the UN­EP FI Prin­ci­ples for Re­spon­si­ble Bank­ing and a found­ing mem­ber of the UN-con­vened Net Ze­ro Bank­ing Al­liance, the group has al­so set an am­bi­tious US$200 mil­lion cli­mate fi­nance goal to help mit­i­gate against cli­mate change and build re­silient in­fra­struc­ture across the 14 ter­ri­to­ries in which it op­er­ates,” the state­ment added.