At a glance: Through the Climate Safe Lending Fellowship, I co-led a leadership programme that helped 58 banking professionals build core competencies in leadership, offer and gain support from a trusting peer community, and advocate for bold climate strategies in their banks.
The challenge: Transforming banks from the inside to meet global climate goals
Climate change is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges of our time, and while all of society has a role to play in mitigating and responding to it, banks play a particularly important one:
Financing by banks can determine which activities take place and which don’t. Currently banks continue to finance new fossil fuel extraction while climate resilience initiatives struggle to access funding. If we are to limit rising temperatures and build resilience to the inevitable effects of climate change, we need banks to make significant strategic, technical, and – most importantly – cultural changes.
Throughout banks, committed professionals are seeking to drive these changes, often finding themselves isolated and lacking support and resources. The Climate Safe Lending Fellowship seeks to equip these ‘bank climate intrapreneurs’ with the skills, tools and networks to drive systems change.
The approach: From overwhelmed individuals to systems leaders
The Climate Safe Lending Fellowship brings together diverse cohorts of banking professionals to participate in a leadership development journey that focuses on building the core competencies needed to catalyse systems change. They bring to the programme challenges including:
- Isolation: Often working alone within their institutions, and lacking the support of others.
- Resistance to change: Facing internal pushback against climate action
- Limited resources: Lacking the time and backing to make meaningful progress, with climate often limited as a “side of desk” activity.
The Fellowship supports them through:
- Core workshops that offer Fellows the opportunity to learn and apply practical tools to a ‘critical shift’ they are working towards in order to make a breakthrough in their bank’s climate impact. Popular frameworks included the International Futures Forum’s Three Horizons, and approaches to using power intentionally to drive systems change, developed by the Rockwool Foundation.
- Peer coaching sessions, that introduce Fellows to critical communications and problem-solving skills, inviting them to practice these with a trusted peer-group while benefiting from their collective intelligence to explore their own goals and circumstances.
- Individualised support from coaches and mentors aimed at addressing their unique challenges and opportunities.
Over three cohorts of the Fellowship my role has included co-designing and facilitating these activities, leading a talented team, building a culture of continual learning and improvement, and cultivating a supportive community among Fellows.
I co-led the Fellowship alongside Jacqueline Lim, a systems strategist, coach & facilitator, who, along with Lydia Hascott, in her role at the Finance Innovation Lab initially developed the Programme.
Read more about the culture of learning among the team and cohort of the inaugural Fellowship, in this blog post.
The difference: Empowered change agents
58 Climate Safe Lending Fellows to-date form an impressive network of determined bank climate intrapreneurs. They tell us that the Fellowship has helped them to:
- Advocate for senior leadership to adopt bolder strategies for their banks to address climate change.
- Transform how they work with stakeholders to implement new policies and processes that drive more concrete action towards achieving climate targets.
- Feel less alone and more confident in their work, with a trusted network of peers they can turn to for practical and emotional support.
- Improve their wellbeing and resilience as change-makers working in challenging environments.
“The Fellowship is a transformative journey enabling you to inspire, lead and embed climate positive actions into your organisation. The facilitators, tutors and contributors were exceptional. Their ability to bring a sense of calm and wellbeing created an inclusive learning experience and an excellent learning environment.” 2024 Fellow
Extending our impact
Alongside the Fellowship’s core goal of supporting Fellows, we share learnings from the programme via publications, webinars and talks, to help inform (and amplify the impact of) others’ work towards financing a more climate just economy or developing systems-change leadership.
You can find out more about the lessons learnt from the previous two cohorts of the Fellowship in this article Nurturing intrapreneurs to drive systems change, and this in-depth report, Catalysing bank climate action: Lessons from the inside, which explores the need for deep cultural change alongside technical changes.


