ESG and the Credit Quality of the World's Largest Banks

MSCI ESG Research hosted a 30-minute call on Tuesday, April 28th, 2020 to discuss “ESG and its relationship with the credit quality of the world’s largest banks”. Global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) are critically important for the world economy. Depending on their financial condition, they can be both vital and destructive to global growth and the stability of financial markets, so we believe it is important to analyze their fitness from an environmental, social and governance (ESG) perspective.

Beginning with an overview of the global systemically important banks and the differences among their ESG profiles, we discussed whether ESG could have been used to identify the banks with the highest credit quality. On this call, Jakub Malich, Senior Analyst and Banks industry lead, shared his insights on the following topics:

· An Introduction to Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs)

· ESG Characteristics and Developments

· ESG, Fundamental Credit Quality and Credit Market Performance: Is there a Link?