About

The Global Sustainable Finance Awards, organised by The Digital Banker, exist to honour and celebrate the world’s preeminent and ground-breaking financial service institutions and their distinguished leadership contribution to driving sustainable finance and responsible investment practices across products, services, solutions, projects and initiatives.

The Digital Banker Awards are accolades of excellence and distinction, attributed to outstanding players; and provides unbiased and objective benchmarks for the global industry in advancing decarbonisation and managing net-zero transition risks. The Global Sustainable Finance Awards 2025 is the world’s only assessment program dedicated to recognising excellence in incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations across the financial services ecosystem.

These awards celebrate the world’s most cutting-edge financial service providers that are pioneering unrivalled standards and capabilities and transforming the industry by setting new milestones in positively enhancing triple bottom line profitability, thereby benefiting all key stakeholders.

If you identify your organisation and/or professionals as industry leaders that are pushing boundaries and championing best in class innovation across sustainable finance – we welcome you to send in your nominations. The submission deadline for all entries is 18:00 GMT, 2nd May 2025.

Why Nominate?

The state of international finance is being positively reshaped to address global challenges such as climate change, social inequality, and sustainable development. These are underscored by broader initiatives as envisaged by UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and Climate Bonds Initiative, with a clear view to driving positive environment, social and governance outcomes. Today, financial institutions are working towards minimizing their carbon footprint and are in various stages of attaining carbon neutrality, while committing to net-zero objectives and advancing capital allocation towards attaining desired sustainability performance targets (SPTs).

Understandably, sustainable finance is rapidly evolving with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimating the value of the sustainable finance market to have reached USD $7 trillion in 2023 registering a 20% year-on-year growth1. The surge in this sector is being driven primarily by sustainable capital market products, reinforced by continued investor confidence and resilience of sustainable investment strategies.

Moreover, regulatory frameworks and government initiatives across the globe are also significantly contributing to it proliferation, providing incentives for ESG investment practices. Sustainable finance is no longer viewed solely as an ethical choice but as a strategic one, with evidence showing that ESG investments can offer substantial competitive advantage in terms of financial performance and risk mitigation. Technological advancements have further facilitated the integration of ESG considerations into investment processes, making sustainable finance more accessible and efficient.

Today’s financial institutions are geared towards introducing and leveraging new processes, frameworks, products and services that are directly contributing to a reduction in emissions. Importantly, these institutions have enhanced their sustainable finance portfolios while strengthening efforts to maintain operational resiliency amid evolving risks. They are also looking to advancing business growth within a sustainable framework while also ensuring the strictest adherence to the highest ESG standards and practices.

Now, more than ever, it is imperative that financial service firms generate positive sustainability impacts through innovative business models and services aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA).

Who Can Apply?

The Global Sustainable Finance Awards program is open to the financial services landscape across numerous lines of business. We invite nominations from retail banks, SME banks, wholesale banks, wealth managers, private banks, investment banks, asset management companies, investment funds, insurance organisations, FinTech companies, technology solution providers and their extended corporate/institutional clients.

Judging Methodology

Shortlisted nominees are selected on the qualitative and quantitative depth of their nominations.

The Digital Banker research team will shortlist four institutions or individuals per category, which will then be put to our impartial panel of expert judges who will undertake a rigorous audit type process to carefully select the winners.

We use a proprietary, numerical & qualitative scoring methodology which is applied to all submissions and augmented by assessment in: Innovation, Sustainability Impact, Responsible Investment & Finance Performance and Governance, keeping the focus on the issuance and development of ESG related financial instruments the institution has launched to date.

We uphold the highest adherence to confidentiality and personal data. As such, all responses will be treated as strictly confidential. No data shall be shared beyond the assessment of The Digital Banker’s judging panel, unless permission has been granted.

Submission Guidelines

Only projects that have been completed in H2 2023-2024 will be accepted. Initiation of the project can be earlier – The Digital Banker does not require a specific commencement date. If a project was completed prior to 2024, the project will be accepted only if any updates have been made to it. We do not place a limit on the number of submissions per institution. Please be aware that multiple submissions by a single organisation for a single category will compete with each other.

A separate submission is required for each category. Please submit all the entries on the platform by choosing the correct category and award title.

Please submit all the entries on the platform by choosing the correct category. All nominations must be submitted on or before 18th April 2025.

For further information, please contact The Digital Banker awards team at: enq@digitalbankeronline.com

REMINDERS

Entries received after the closing date will not be accepted under any circumstances.
All entries and supporting material will be kept strictly confidential amongst our panel of judges and shall be securely destroyed upon request.

We may request a further interview with the executive managing the program or initiative that is being nominated. The objective of the interview is merely to gain deeper insights, (if needed) for the purposes of judging.

Submission Deadline: 18th April 2025, 18:00 GMT

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