Getting Down to Business

This report by RMI introduces a 'portfolio-led approach' to help banks translate high-level net-zero commitments into credible, actionable strategies. The approach advocates for analyzing a bank's activities through four key pillars—sectors, geographies, asset classes, and business units—to optimize real-economy impact and avoid organizational blind spots across strategy design, implementation, and reporting.

• The portfolio-led approach is designed to enhance the credibility and robustness of net-zero banking by analyzing four key pillars: sectors, geographies, asset classes, and business units. This framework helps banks identify where they have the most influence and how to best support the real-economy transition.
• The approach integrates into the three primary stages of net-zero banking: strategy design, implementation, and reporting. It aims to move banks from high-level commitments to specific actions by leveraging unique influence levers and creating comprehensive narratives for stakeholders.
• The portfolio-led approach is intended to complement and extend existing industry guidance, such as that from the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ) and the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). While sectoral approaches are common in existing guidance, the portfolio-led approach emphasizes that geographies, asset classes, and business units are equally important but less standard considerations.
• Effective implementation requires 'transition-relevant data and metrics,' which CCAF defines as data that most effectively enables day-to-day decision-making for the highest real-economy impact. Examples include forward-looking metrics like client capital expenditure plans and transition plans.
• The report highlights that different asset classes provide different levers for influencing the real economy. For example, fixed income allows for making lending conditional on sustainable practices, while private equity can enable the appointment of climate expertise to executive boards through majority stakes.
• Activating specific business units allows banks to mobilize the unique competitive advantages of different teams. For instance, retail banking can drive consumer demand via green mortgages and electric vehicle loans, while global markets can develop restrictive trading policies to impact the liquidity of products with unfavorable real-economy impacts.

APA

Crouch-Hess, K., Harnett, E., Mann, W., & Warshauer, E. (2022). Getting Down to Business. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/dlm_uploads/2022/12/getting_down_to_business.pdf

Chicago

Crouch-Hess, Kaitlin, Elizabeth Harnett, Whitney Mann, and Ella Warshauer. Getting Down to Business. RMI, 2022. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/dlm_uploads/2022/12/getting_down_to_business.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Crouch-Hess |first1=Kaitlin |last2=Harnett |first2=Elizabeth |last3=Mann |first3=Whitney |last4=Warshauer |first4=Ella |title=Getting Down to Business |publisher=RMI |date=December 2022 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/dlm_uploads/2022/12/getting_down_to_business.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{crouchhess2022getting, author = {Crouch-Hess, Kaitlin and Harnett, Elizabeth and Mann, Whitney and Warshauer, Ella}, title = {{Getting Down to Business}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2022}, month = dec, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/dlm_uploads/2022/12/getting_down_to_business.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }