Paris, May 6th, 2020 – Today, Reclaim Finance publishes the most accurate analysis tool ever released regarding policies adopted by French financial players in the coal sector. The aim is twofold: to facilitate the comparison between policies on the same public criteria and to allow clients, media and other stakeholders to assess the gap between existing practices and the objective of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. At the moment, only five French financial players have a robust coal phase-out policy.

At least 40 French financial institutions, which belong to 25 financial groups, now have policies restricting their financial services to the thermal coal sector. These numbers are expected to increase following the commitment made in July 2019 by the Paris financial centre that all French financial players must adopt a coal phase-out policy by mid-2020.

“Our message is clear: Yes, we need all players to adopt an exit policy for coal, but not just any policy. Beyond quantity is the issue of quality. Today, our analysis shows that only five financial players have an effective policy to support a coal phase-out in time to follow a 1.5°C path. We wish, with a simple tool, to enable everyone to know the true status of where their bank, insurer or asset manager lies on climate and coal. We only have 10 to 20 years to close thousands of coal mines, plants and infrastructure, but some financial players are still financing coal expansion,” comments Lucie Pinson, Executive Director of Reclaim Finance.

The financial players’ policies are evaluated on five criteria on a scale from 0 to 10, with a colour code to quickly identify the quality of policies on each criterion. The tool also offers a qualitative assessment for each player. For the sake of transparency, Reclaim Finance publishes the details of the scoring grid and the explanation behind each score. All the financial players mentioned have been contacted and had the opportunity to comment on their scores before publication.

“Our tool for assessing all the financial players of the Paris financial centre is completely new in its scope and depth of analysis. We hope that it will help to create a healthy competition between players to ensure that all French investors, banks and insurance companies adopt an efficient coal policy. Some have already informed us that they are working on a first policy or a revision of their current policy. BNP Paribas’ policy is particularly expected. The bank is well behind its peers and has announced coal deadlines that are not in line with the 1.5°C objective,” concludes Yann Louvel, Policy Analyst for Reclaim Finance.

Reclaim Finance plans to expand the scope of the Coal Policy Tool to all international financial institutions soon.

Press contacts : Reclaim Finance / Lucie Pinson : +33 6 79 54 37 15