The Green Bond Principles (GBP), Social Bond Principles (SBP), Sustainability Bond Guidelines (SBG), and the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles (“the Principles”) are voluntary process guidelines which make recommendations for transparency and disclosure to issuers, helping investors to make informed decisions about the bonds' environmental and social features. They are supported by a global community of nearly 400 institutions and have become the internationally accepted framework for issuing in this market. Recently, the community also released the Climate Transition Finance Handbook, which is an issuer-level disclosure framework that helps issuers connect their instruments (e.g. green or sustainability-linked bonds) with credible transition strategies.
This course provides a thorough and practical introduction to the essentials of green, social and sustainability bonds (GSS), featuring practical examples which illustrate the steps required for making a sustainable bond issue.
It introduces the underlying market drivers, evolving regulatory framework and the main features of GSS bonds based on the Principles, including essential definitions of what constitutes a GSS bond issue and a detailed review of how the Principles work.
While focusing on green, social and sustainability bonds, this course also briefly looks at other relevant developments such as various taxonomies including the EU Taxonomy and official labels such as the EU Green Bond Standard.
*Public classroom based courses will return when it is safe to do so. If you are interested in running the course in-house, please contact us.
Course Outcomes
By completing this course you will be able to:
- Identify recent trends and potential future developments and opportunities for green, social and sustainability bonds
- Discuss why the market matters and how it works
- Understand foundation skills for taking part in the GSS bond market - how and why to align with and apply the Principles, including:
- Benefits of GSS bonds and developing the positioning in your organisation
- Decision-makers: Identifying who is relevant
- Strategy: Alignment with overall corporate / environmental strategy
- Regulation: The Principles’ importance in regulatory trends
- Players: Mapping leading market players
- Identify principles aligned issuance framework: 4 pillars of GSS bonds
- Define green and social: Types of projects eligible for GSS bonds
- Recognise reporting frameworks: Recommendations and practice in reporting, including allocation and impact reports, and templates offered by the GBP SBP
- Understand external reviews and other services: The role and value-added of service providers, notably external reviews foreseen by the GBP SBP and increasingly by regulators
- Identify perspectives and roles of the key players in the GSS bond market including –regulators, investors, underwriters, issuers, external reviewers including rating agencies, stock exchanges, data and index providers.
Who should attend?
- Firms who are looking to issue or invest in green, social and sustainability bonds
- Market professionals involved in underwriting, research or professional services for sustainable bonds; this includes capital markets lawyers, external reviewers including rating agencies, stock exchanges, data and index providers official sector representatives promoting, supervising or developing policies on sustainable finance
- Press, academics and other professionals with an interest in sustainable finance and the merits of sustainable bond markets
Course coordinator - Online self-study
Raymond Seager
Course trainers - Livestreamed
Raymond Seager
Simone Utermarck