ICMA’s value proposition in developing a Sustainable Economy

The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) is a not-for-profit international association that aims to foster and promote well-functioning, resilient and globally sound debt securities markets, which are vital for sustainable economic development and growth. The Association’s existence is long-standing, actively establishing rules, principles, guidelines and recommendations for international capital markets for over 50 years. 

At the heart of the Association are its members: over 600 made up of banks, fund and asset managers, private and public sector issuers, law firms, insurance companies, capital market infrastructure providers, and central banks. ICMA members come together from various regions, to focus on both market practices and regulatory issues. In recent years, one of the main priorities is Sustainable Finance, with three fixed income market areas at its core: primary, secondary and repo and collateral markets. 

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ICMA is committed to:

ICMA and Sustainable Finance 

Sustainable Finance being at the heart of the priorities, ICMA has established various working groups, committees and constituencies focused on discussing and exploring the feasibility of sustainable finance and providing recommendations, guidelines and principles.

Serving as the Secretariat, ICMA provides support and governance advice to:

• the Green Bond Principles (GBP)
• the Social Bond Principles (SBP)
• the Sustainability Bond Guidelines (SBG) and,
• the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles (SLBP) 

The Principles were established and designed to be industry inclusive in order to enable green, social and sustainability bond issuers as well as bonds linked to sustainability, banks and investors, to participate and apply for membership.

ICMA has also created a Sustainable Finance Committee, which covers different ICMA committees and groups that are increasingly interested in sustainable finance and the Steering Group of the Principles. For example, the Sustainable Finance Working Group aims to ensure that the development of the regulatory and market agendas related to sustainability are developed with the participation of corporate issuers. ICMA aims to establish a bond between corporate issuers and aspects of ICMA’s sustainability work. The ESG Working Group, on the other hand, brings together members with legal expertise that focus on ESG topics and can provide regulatory and legal knowledge.

ICMA and the EU Taxonomy 

On the EU Taxonomy more specifically, ICMA and its constituencies have developed key recommendations for EU co-legislators that address potential usability challenges such as, for example, enabling the Technical Screening Criteria to be adapted to non-EU jurisdictions to foster global usability and simplifying the NACE classification for complex projects. ICMA also provides emerging solutions from market practices and regulatory developments including the adjustments made by the future CSRD, the Common Ground Taxonomy, which provides an international process, and the work of the EU Commission’s Platform on Sustainable Finance of which ICMA is a member.

Greenomy similarly benefits from these discussions as it continuously incorporates relevant updates from the current regulatory framework. Greenomy is already incorporating various key aspects outlined by ICMA, such as the global feasibility and usability of the EU Taxonomy to enable an interoperable and all-encompassing reporting platform.

Greenomy advocates with international thought-leaders and standard setters to keep track of critical developments in global sustainable finance, and to contribute our expertise towards ‘greening up' the economy on a worldwide scale. 

For more information on the international working groups that we advocate with, check out our vision.