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Supporting Sovereigns, Supranationals and Agencies (SSAs) on every step of their sustainability journey

Climate, ESG and Sustainable Finance for SSAs

About us

We offer Climate and ESG solutions and advice to guide SSAs through the development and implementation of their sustainable finance strategies, to successfully address environmental and societal challenges.

We are a specialist team with capabilities in ESG advisory and sustainable finance for SSAs, including local governments, and we support our customers across the full spectrum of financing solutions. SSAs play an integral role in mitigating climate change and ensuring a just transition, given the social impact on communities.

Our capabilities extend to both the public and private space across the GBP, EUR and USD markets. We help our customers further embed sustainability considerations into their strategies, develop their sustainable financing capabilities, and connect with the global community of ESG investors. We also advise our customers on improving their ESG ratings and sustainability performance and navigating an increasingly complex ESG policy and regulatory landscape.

How we could support your institution

We take a holistic approach to assisting our customers with all aspects of their sustainable finance journey by providing advice, ideas and solutions, thought leadership and insights. 

Our services centre around advisory and execution across the following topics:

  • Sustainability focused products
  • Development of sustainable finance frameworks
  • Bespoke sustainability focused reporting advisory
  • ESG rating and disclosure advisory
  • ESG investor engagement
  • ESG policy / regulatory insight
  • ESG scorecards and issuer profile 

Our work

We have assisted numerous Sovereigns, Supranationals and Agencies (SSAs) with a wide range of sustainability-labelled transactions, celebrating many market ‘firsts’. In particular, we have gained experience in supporting sovereigns in their Green Bond market debuts, in the long and short end of the curve.

We are also a longstanding partner of key frequent SSA issuers such as KfW, EIB, EU (SURE and NGEU), World Bank, NRW Bank, BNG, CADES and Société du Grand Paris, being a recurrent lead manager in their GSS bond transactions in EUR, USD or GBP.

Furthermore, we are proud to have reached top positions in structuring and arranging Green, Social and Sustainability Bonds across multiple currencies:

  • We are the #7 bookrunner for GSS SSA issuance in Europe
  • We are #2 bookrunner for Green Bonds (ex Sov) issuance in Europe
  • We are #8 bookrunner for Social Bonds in Europe

Source: Dealogic (as of Sept 2023), all currencies

 

At NatWest, we recognise the interlinkage of a customer’s sustainability strategy and reporting and its impact on ESG ratings and investors’ ESG scorecards, and as a result are providing a dedicated service that guides customers to optimise their communication and interaction with various stakeholders.

Winner Environmental Finance Bond Awards 2022 - lead manager of the year - local authority / municipality 2022 NatWest

Awards

We have also been recognised for our work, receiving the following award:

Lead manager of the Year 2022, social bonds – local authority/municipality

Product Innovation and Partnership

Product innovation and partnership are at the centre of our philosophy, as we demonstrated at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. During that period, NatWest was the structuring adviser to Bpifrance on their Covid-19 Response Framework, one of only two in the market. The framework helped mobilise funds to the SMEs in France during the pandemic.

In addition, we value and stimulate an active dialogue between investors and issuers, encouraging best practice and information sharing to help demystify ESG approaches.

Our customers

We are proud to have supported numerous customers with a wide range of ESG transactions, celebrating many sustainability ‘firsts’. 

You can read in more detail about how we have helped our SSA and Municipality customers on our Case Studies page or see recent examples of our work below:

UK Debt Management . UK Debt Management

UK Debt Management Office

We helped the UK DMO with its debut on the Green Bond market, issuing the longest dated sovereign Green bond outstanding in the market globally with a size of £6 billion. A further record was set with this transaction as the most covered green sovereign deal to date.

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Federal Republic of Germany case study Federal Republic of Germany

Federal Republic of Germany

We supported the first 5-year Green Federal Note ever syndicated by Germany, which was at the time the largest Sovereign Green bond issued in 2022 and one of the few sovereigns providing 5-year Green Bonds. This transaction marked NatWest’s first syndication for the German Sovereign and is the result of strong collaboration throughout NatWest Sales trading, syndication and DCM.

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CADES, lighten the debt, brighten the future.

CADES

NatWest led two transactions in 2022 for CADES with their $ CADES USD 3-year and EUR5bn Short 5-year Social Bond in November, achieving yet again a very strong outcome for a Social Bond, after lead-managing two US Dollar transactions for them in 2021. At NatWest we’re committed to helping organisations across the UK, Europe and the US to access funding in diverse currencies for their sustainability initiative.

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Insights

Furthermore, we also support our research teams in providing ESG insights and content that aligns with our customers’ needs and challenges. You can find all ESG content on our Sustainability Hub and on Agile Markets

You can also access some recent examples of our insights below:

Contact Us

To discuss how NatWest could support your sustainability journey, contact us today:

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