In beefing up its ESG assessment process, the bank hopes to filter out greenwashing as interest in sustainable investing grows.

As the business and political elite rub heads and shoulders at the annual Word Economic Forum in Davos this week, climate risk is high on the list of talking points, if less so on the list of clear collective action. Releasing its annual Global Risks report last week, the WEF identified the top five global threats as all being climate related. On this theme, Standard Chartered also chose the week to launch a ramped-up ESG review process. Called ESG Select, the emerging markets specialist hopes that the new proprietary framework will strengthen the fight against “greenwashing" and manage risk better and spot opportunities for clients more effectively.

The global bank, which has strong private client markets in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, said that tightening fund selection and curation using environmental, social and governance criteria was “timely and critical”. The bank began including ESG scores in its wealth management investment advisory notes for equities and fixed income in the third quarter of 2019, and has seen growing interest from "high net worth clients to include a sustainable element in their investment portfolios.”